Talk me down please - omicron and the under 5s

[itsacovidxmasone]

Gone down a rabbit hole now about omicron and preschool kids and don't know what to believe. My child had (original) covid around their 2nd birthday and was largely fine. But I've been reading on threads and various Googles about young children being hospitalised and worse with omicron.

Anyone have experience with young kids and omicron and can calm me down before I lock myself and my family down? 😩

@BelleandH Is your daughter better? My DD had this at the start of the pandemic when testing wasn’t a big thing (March 2020). Took about 2 weeks to recover (unable to keep food or fluids down in that time). This kept recurring almost every month to 2 months. Eventually, they took a stool sample and blood sample and her Calprotectin and ESR (inflammatory markers) were sky high. Got referred to the hospital, and with everything happening at the hospitals at the time, didn’t get the attention she needed. And over the course of 1 year (recurring bouts), it got better, until she had the COVID-19 vaccine, and had a super flare-up. Went to A&E, long story short, had to have emergency endoscopy and colonoscopy. And diagnosed with ulcerative coilitis (the wording on the report was “no area was spared”). I don’t understand it all but suspect that in her, the virus and the vaccine triggered some kind of auto-immune response. My 2 cents is to ask for a stool sample and blood sample to be done so they can check for inflammatory markers and go from there. It wasn’t easy for us for the blood sample because we found no one wanted to take blood sample from a minor. So start with the stool sample when she is in the position to pass out stool again. Hope you get to the bottom of this soon. Been there and I feel your pain.

Test

3 year old currently has covid, pretty much asymptomatic- little bit of a productive type of cough seems to be making an appearance a few times today but so far so good! We have a 4 week old baby too and he is very tired, not drinking as much breast milk. Took him to hospital and they observed for hours then said we could leave and observe at home. Scary but trying to stay calm!

I work with children. I know literally hundreds of under 5s who have had covid this winter (so will be mainly omicron) and none have been seriously ill. Most have been poorly for a couple of day with some residual symptoms for another couple of days. All recovered well. Please don’t panic.

So my DD (3.5) ended up getting it a month ago after all (second time, first was Oct 2020) and it was thankfully uneventful. She has been clear for 4 weeks now, but sadly is on her second cold! The first cold was minor but the current one has her constantly coughing and bunged up - LFTs saying it's not covid. No idea where she caught whatever it is as we have been off for Easter for two weeks!