Children’s hospitals across the country say they are still experiencing a wave of children suffering from a serious illness that usually follows coronavirus infections.
The whole picture: Severe coronavirus infections in children remain extremely rare compared to the risk for adults. But the persistent side effects of these infections mean that children’s hospitalization rates do not exactly reflect adults.
Even as coronavirus hospitalizations general decline, children’s hospitals say they still have a large number of children suffering from multisystem inflammatory syndrome, commonly known as MIS-C, – a serious disease that usually occurs a few weeks after a child is infected with coronavirus
- MIS-C can cause inflammation in different parts of the body, and symptoms include fever, abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea. Most cases occur in children between 1 and 14 years of age, and the condition disproportionately affects children of color, according to the CDC.
- “As the general population seems to have fewer active cases, we see that more children are admitted with COVID problems, but most – I would say more than half in the last five weeks – are children with MIS-C,” he said. SAPS Rob McGregor, medical director at Akron Children’s Hospital.
What are they saying: Hospitals say the disease appears to be more common now than it was earlier in the pandemic, and children are sicker now than they were in previous years.
- “MIS-C really hit us this time, and the last month was much bigger and more acute than us [had] forward with MIS-C – and that’s hard to explain, “said Lara Shekerdemian, head of critical care at Texas Children’s Hospital.
- Unlike other children’s hospitals interviewed by Axios, Texas Children’s also saw more severe cases of acute COVID. “It seems that … we’ve seen patients in the last two or three months who are sicker with COVID than we did in the early experience,” Shekerdemian added.
By numbers: Pediatric hospitalizations related to COVID increased by 50% between October 1 and January 7, according to an analysis of data on human and health services conducted by the University of Minnesota, the COVID-19 hospitalization follow-up project.
- Hospitalizations for adults increased by almost 300% in the same period.
- Hospitalizations for adults have since fallen by 54%, while hospitalizations for children have fallen by 25%.
- As cases began to rise in late November and December, “based on our experience, I said OK, the MIS-C working group, mark your timelines,” he said. Roberta DeBiasi, Head of the Pediatric Diseases Division at the National Children’s Hospital in Washington, DC. This wave started in January and continues today.
- The CDC has complete information only on the number of MIS-C cases, especially until mid-December, when they were on the rise.
What we are looking for: Children’s hospitals said that, based on previous trends, the number of hospitalizations is expected to decline in the coming weeks, a delayed result of the prevalence of the lower coronavirus community.
- “It looks like the peaks we had at the children’s hospital lagged a little behind what we saw in the adult systems,” said Ronald Ford, chief physician at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital. “I would expect the drop in admissions to start. Now, the big unknown here for everyone is how these new variants will affect things.”
- He said it was not yet clear how the new virus variants were affecting children and that there was a “distinct possibility” that they could be linked to more severe cases of MIS-C.
- “We don’t know, but this is one of those things that will have to be studied and analyzed if different variants have a different severity rate of MIS-C in children,” he added.