âA 6-Year-Old In A 90-Year-Oldâs Bodyâ â The Children Devastated By Long Covid
Hundreds of children are not back to full health after COVID-19. Their parents feel helpless.
âHeâs like a six-year-old in a 90-year-oldâs body,â says Chris Ward of his son Thomas, who first fell ill last February with a fever, breathlessness and aches all over his body.
Thomas was assessed at A&E where the family was asked if theyâd been to Italy â they hadnât. They were sent home with instructions that it was a viral infection and Thomas, then five, needed to rest.
In a phenomenon that is worrying paediatricians, 75% of the children worst affected by paediatric inflammatory multi-system syndrome (PIMS) were black, Asian or ethnic minority (BAME). Almost four out of five children were previously healthy, according to an unpublished snapshot of cases.
It often involves rashes, a temperature of up to 40C, dangerously low blood pressure and abdominal problems, and in serious cases its symptoms are like those of toxic shock or the potentially fatal condition sepsis. Two children are thought to have died of PIMS since the pandemic began.
Part of a presentation she made to a recent webinar attended by more than 1,000 paediatricians showed that, in a “first national report” into 78 patients with PIMS who ended up in intensive care, 47% were of Afro-Caribbean origin and 28% of Asian background – between five and six times higher than the 14% of the UK’s population who are BAME.