No looming outbreak of new childhood disease: PIMS-TS

An outbreak of a new childhood disease related to Covid-19 is not on the cards, a doctor affiliated with the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) said.

“This is a rare disease that we have seen following peaks of Covid-19 in various regions but we continue to see cases slowly,” Dr Kate Webb told Pretoria Rekord, adding that the number of cases had, however, decreased since cases related to coronavirus begun decreasing.

This after media reports were circulated last month of Paediatric Inflammatory Multisystem Syndrome (PIMS-TS) – a new childhood disease which caused severe fever, inflammation and heart complications – was on the rise in the country.

Webb explained the childhood disease was a rare complication of Covid-19 which affected children of any age, including teenagers but “very rarely” young people in their early 20s as well.

“The immune system overreacts a few weeks after infection and the child may get a rash, fever and organ involvement, particularly of the heart,” she said, adding the children may be “pretty unwell”.

She, however, noted that all the children they had treated survived with no long-term problems.

“Children by large remain at very low risk from the pandemic,” Webb said.

The new childhood disease was also understood to “not really” be contagious. “This syndrome, we think, is related to the child previously having Covid-19 although most of them never had any symptoms and didn’t even know they had it,” Webb said, adding that by the time it developed to PIMS-TS, the children tested negative for Covid-19 and were not usually contagious.

“But we will test to make sure.” However, she could say outright the childhood disease was related to Covid-19.

“We think so as the majority of the children have Covid antibodies and the disease is new and has followed the pandemic curve but we haven’t been able to fully prove this yet.”

Webb also said some of the health risks associated with the disease included affecting the heart and causing the child to have low blood pressure.

“This may need support while we try and get the immune system to quiet down,” she said, adding that the cause of the disease had not yet been established.

“We don’t know why the immune system gets over-activated in some children and not others.”

Some symptoms she said associated with the disease included a persistent fever, red eyes, rash; stomach pain, low blood pressure and cracked red lips.

“This combination of symptoms may represent many different diseases in children so it is important that doctors and nurses work hard to look for all of these causes in addition of PIMS-TS,” she said.

Webb said they were working hard to spread the word and support doctors in the country to recognise and care for infected children.

Despite some of the uncertainty which surrounded the disease, Webb said they were working “very hard” with doctors and researchers around the country and world to learn as much as they could about the disease as quickly as possible.

For more information about PIMS-TS, read the full systematic review published by The Lancet.

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