Children’s hospitals across the country say they still see a wave of children suffering from a serious illness that is usually due to coronavirus infections.
The big picture: Serious 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 declining in general, pediatric hospitals say they still see a large number of children suffering from multisystem inflammatory syndrome, commonly known as MIS-C, a serious illness that usually occurs several weeks after a child is infected with the coronavirus.
- MIS-C can cause inflammation in various parts of the body and symptoms include fever, abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea. Most cases occur in children between the ages of 1 and 14 and the disease disproportionately affects children of color, according to the CDC.
- “Because the general population seems to have fewer active cases, we see that there are more children admitted with COVID-related problems, but most of these (I would say more than half in the last five weeks) are children who have MIS- C, ”he said Rob McGregor, chief physician at Akron Children’s Hospital.
What they say: Hospitals say the disease appears to be more common now than before in the pandemic, and that children are now sicker than in previous waves.
- “The MIS-C has really hit us this time and the last month has been much bigger and sharper than us [had] before 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 has also seen more severe cases of acute COVID. “It feels like … we’ve seen in the last two months patients who are sicker when they have COVID than we did in the first experience,” Shekerdemian added.
By numbers: Pediatric hospitalizations related to COVID increased by 50% between October 1 and January 7, according to an analysis of human and health services data conducted by the COVID-19 hospitalization monitoring project of the University of Minnesota.
- Adult hospitalizations increased by almost 300% during the same period.
- Adult hospitalizations have fallen by 54%, while children’s hospitalizations have fallen by 25%.
- As cases began to increase in late November and December, “in our experience, we said OK, MIS-C working group, mark your calendars,” he said. Roberta DeBiasi, head of the Pediatric Diseases Division at Washington National Children’s Hospital, DC. This wave started in January and continues today.
- The CDC only has complete information on the number of MIS-C cases specifically until mid-December, when they increased.
What we are seeing: Pediatric hospitals said that, according to previous trends, they expect the number of hospitalizations to decrease in the coming weeks, a delayed result of the lower community prevalence of coronavirus.
- “It looks like the peaks we had at the children’s hospital were a little behind those we were seeing in the adult systems,” said Ronald Ford, chief physician at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital. “I would expect foot tickets to start falling. Now, the big unknown here for everyone is how these new variants will be affected.”
- He said it is still unclear how the new variants of the virus affect children and that there is a “clear possibility” that they could be linked to more serious cases of MIS-C.
- “We don’t know, but this is one of those things that will need to be studied and studied, if the different variants have a different severity rate than MIS-C in children,” he added.