Inflammatory syndrome among kids worries pediatric specialists

Thirteen children under 12 who were not fully vaccinated suffered from a post-Covid inflammation response - high fever, swollen neck and rashes - two to eight weeks after contracting the disease, pediatricians said.

The Hospital Authority doctors also studied the city's eight Covid deaths in children below 18 and found that three of them died of the disease while for three others it was a major factor leading to their deaths.

Mike Kwan Yat-wah, a consultant at the department of pediatrics and adolescent medicine at Princess Margaret Hospital, said yesterday that from March, Hong Kong has seen 13 children - eight boys and five girls, aged between three and 11 - suffer from Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children after recovering from Covid.

Kwan said seven of the children needed to be treated at the intensive care unit. All of the cases were healthy and did not suffer from any chronic illness prior to being diagnosed with the syndrome.

Some of the patients caught the virus within 14 days after their vaccination, while some did not receive the jabs at all.

Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome is a condition that can affect children two to eight weeks after they contracted Covid, with symptoms including persistent fever, decrease in mobility and nausea.

"It is believed that the virus is a trigger. It is the immunomodulating agent leading to inflammatory responses to multisystems of the patient, so it is more common in children because they have a stronger immune system," Kwan said as he urged parents to have their children vaccinated as soon as possible.

"Evidence already shows that vaccination can effectively prevent the syndrome from happening," he added.

Lau Yu-lung, chair professor of the University of Hong Kong's Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, said the team reviewed eight deaths by evaluating the children's medical history, vaccination status, clinical data and preliminary autopsy results.

Of the eight deaths, a three-year-old girl who passed away on February 15 and an 11-month-old baby girl who died on February 20 died of Covid.

A three-year-old girl who suffered from epilepsy and passed away on February 11 also died of the coronavirus, Lau said.

Lau said Covid infection could be a major factor leading to the death of three other children, including a nine-year-old boy who suffered from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy - an inherited muscular disease that causes muscle weakness - and died on February 24. The others were a four-year-old girl with a heart rhythm problem and an eight-year-old girl with hypothyroidism. They both died on March 7.

Lau said it is still being determined if Covid is related to the remaining two cases - an otherwise healthy four-year-old boy who died on February 11 and a 14-year-old who fell from a height on March 16.

"We are still waiting for the coroners' reports to understand why he died so suddenly after a brief illness for only two days," he said about the four-year-old boy.

For the 14-year-old, Lau said there is very little information from the Hospital Authority about the case.

Lau said that among the eight deaths, four of the children who were eligible to get vaccinated did not receive their jabs, while of the 26 critical cases from February, 12 of the eligible children were not vaccinated.

He said Covid is the cause of the children's condition in 12 of the 26 critical cases and the virus is also an "important factor" for eight cases.

carine.chow@singtaonewscorp.com