The CDC is warning physicians to be on the lookout for a possibly COVID-linked illness that has impacted hundreds of children across the country.
Ochsner Lafayette Pediatric Cardiologist Dr. Katherine Lindle says the symptoms do not look like COVID-19 in adults.
“A lot of children are having abdominal pain, or vomiting, maybe some diarrhea. Some children may also have some respiratory symptoms such as sore throat or trouble breathing,” says Lindle.
Lindle also warns children have presented with rashes and inflamed tongues that look like strawberries.
Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome appears to take hold in many patients after their initial COVID-19 infection has passed. Lindle says sometimes as much as weeks later.
“It would not have been something that they even thought much of and fortunately they recovered from that and then we are kind of seeing a second wave of these symptoms,” says Lindle.
Ochsner reports having treated three such cases in Louisiana, and Lindle says fatal outcomes for children afflicted by the disease are rare.
“Fortunately we have not seen much of it in Louisiana, and it is still an extremely rare thing that we are seeing but we just want people to be aware,” says Lindle.
More than half of the reported cases have been found in New York.