Mysterious illness follows COVID-19 in children

Hospitals in New York City and on Long Island have treated at least 50 children for a strange inflammatory syndrome. As of Tuesday, Cohen Children’s Medical Center in Queens had admitted five patients age 12 or younger with symptoms in just two days. The illness that doctors are calling “pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome” causes rashes, blood circulation problems, abdominal pain, and fever. Some physicians compare it to Kawasaki disease. The syndrome also has surfaced in Europe and other coronavirus hot spots across the United States. None of the diagnosed children have died.

How is this related to COVID-19? The condition seems to follow outbreaks of the new coronavirus. Some of the patients tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies—suggesting they had already contracted the disease—while others came from families of people who had recently recovered. Doctors told The New York Times they confronted the first cases a few weeks after New York City saw a spike in COVID-19 cases.

Dig deeper: Read Dr. Charles Horton’s report on what COVID-19 antibody tests can tell us about the disease.