Three chil­dren are now ward­ed at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty af­ter they con­tract­ed the COVID-19 virus. While they were said to be do­ing well up to Sat­ur­day, health of­fi­cials have ad­mit­ted it is an alarm­ing de­vel­op­ment.

Re­veal­ing this as she spoke dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Tho­racic Spe­cial­ist Dr Michelle Trot­man warned the pop­u­la­tion against be­com­ing com­pla­cent as lo­cal cas­es con­tin­ue to rise.

She de­scribed it as un­for­tu­nate that young chil­dren were now pre­sent­ing with the virus.

Di­ag­nos­ing the con­di­tion in the lo­cal chil­dren as Mul­ti­sys­tem in­flam­ma­to­ry syn­drome (MIS-C), she said echocar­dio­grams (ECGs) had been con­duct­ed on the three while sup­port stud­ies and in­put by pae­di­a­tri­cians had been al­so been ob­tained.

MIS-C in chil­dren is a con­di­tion where dif­fer­ent body parts can be­come in­flamed, in­clud­ing the heart, lungs, kid­neys, brain, skin, eyes, or gas­troin­testi­nal or­gans. Symp­toms of MIS-C in­clude fever, ab­dom­i­nal pain, vom­it­ing, di­ar­rhoea, neck pain, rash, blood­shot eyes, and feel­ing ex­tra tired.

She said, “Un­for­tu­nate­ly, these chil­dren have in­volve­ment of the heart. They are do­ing well but they do have in­volve­ment of the heart.”

While the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion said they do not know what caus­es MIS-C, they warned it can be se­ri­ous, even dead­ly.

Trot­man said with COVID-19 now im­pact­ing the pae­di­atric pop­u­la­tion with them re­quir­ing hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion, “It was rel­a­tive­ly new for us.”

Urg­ing adults to ad­here to the new nor­mal to don face masks, san­i­tize, and so­cial dis­tance as they move about in pub­lic, Trot­man said be­hav­iour­al changes ob­served in malls and at places where in-house din­ing has been al­lowed were among the main cul­prits.

“What were are see­ing, un­for­tu­nate­ly, is that peo­ple are par­tak­ing of this but not san­i­tiz­ing ap­pro­pri­ate­ly,” she said.

To peo­ple who be­lieve that the mall’s clean­ing staff ought to wipe down every­where, Trot­man said, “This dis­ease is about us tak­ing per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Walk with your san­i­tiz­er. Walk with a tis­sue. Wipe where you just came from. Make it bet­ter for the per­son who is com­ing…make it bet­ter for our coun­try.”

Deyals­ingh: Pae­di­atric pop­u­la­tion not im­mune to virus

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said the pae­di­atric pop­u­la­tion was not im­mune to the rav­ages of the virus.

“They are not brush­ing it off as we thought they would have two months ago and what is com­ing out of all the da­ta now is that young chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly the school-age chil­dren and young adults be­tween the ages of 15 to 29 to 40, are now the new su­per spread­ers.

“These are the pop­u­la­tions that are spread­ing the virus more and more, and more im­por­tant­ly, tak­ing it home to the el­der­ly where they will bear the brunt of it and they will die,” he said.

COVID stats

Sat­ur­day’s 4 pm clin­i­cal up­date re­vealed 16 new cas­es had been record­ed dur­ing 24 hours,while the deaths in­creased to 122.

Epi­demi­ol­o­gist Dr Av­ery Hinds said even though clus­ter cas­es con­tin­ued to be record­ed among the prison pop­u­la­tion and formed part of the dai­ly sta­tis­tics, if this num­ber were ex­clud­ed from the over­all num­bers, “Then we’ve held fair­ly steady with re­spect to the num­ber of cas­es over the last cou­ple of weeks.”

Point­ing out that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 19 cas­es had been record­ed in To­ba­go with­in the past two weeks ago, Hinds said there were two sce­nar­ios to con­sid­er—where asymp­to­matic peo­ple sup­press­ing their symp­toms had been mov­ing be­tween the two is­lands.

He said this un­der­scored the im­por­tance of stay­ing put when you are ill as this move­ment had re­sult­ed in To­ba­go’s case­load in­creas­ing once again.

Deyals­ingh once again ap­pealed to peo­ple to in­vest in prop­er be­hav­iours now so they would be alive to wel­come the new year.

He pe­ti­tioned re­li­gious lead­ers to again cau­tion their con­gre­ga­tions about pub­lic gath­er­ings and keep their fam­i­ly cir­cles small and tight.