Primary school children who see critically ill children contract COVID in addition to other viruses

SALT LAKE CITY – Although doctors acknowledge that COVID-19 often causes minor symptoms in children, officials at Children’s Primary Hospital say they face an influx of patients with coronavirus and other respiratory infections, often in the same time.

A teenage patient died at the hospital last week from COVID-19.

“It was absolutely devastating for the staff here,” Dr. Andrew Pavia said Thursday during a press conference.

According to the pediatric infectious disease expert and director of pediatric primary school epidemiology, children’s hospitals nationwide (including Utah’s only children’s hospital) are “packed to the brim” and operate with extreme overload. . This includes placing two children in each room and canceling major surgeries to make room in the intensive care unit, Pavia said.

The strain is not due to COVID-19 itself, but to its combination with cases of trauma and seasonal RSV. The coronavirus is the “straw that breaks the camel’s back in the health system,” Pavia said.

Jacob Ferrin, a registered nurse in the pediatric ICU at Children’s Primary Hospital, noted that the regional hospital is considered a “last line of defense” for children not only in the state of Beehive, but among Denver in Los Angeles and Phoenix in Canada.

With critical cases for adults, it is often due to age-related health issues, Ferrin said. But for children, something “builds badly” or something happens to them to put them at risk.

Ferrin said hospital children with inflammation from other viruses also contract COVID-19, prolonging critical care stays.

“When kids have so much inflammation all over their body, everything hurts. Their eyes can turn very red, it hurts when you touch their arm,” he said.

This story will be updated.

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