Urgent probe on COVID-19 link to mystery inflammatory disease in children

The nation’s chief health officer will brief national cabinet on the deadly inflammatory disease apparently linked to COVID-19.

New York City health authorities have issued an alert to doctors about a severe inflammatory condition possibly linked with COVID-19 found in a cluster of US children after first being reported in Europe. Picture: AP

The nation’s chief health officer has commissioned urgent advice on the mystery deadly inflammatory disease that has been reported by doctors in New York and the UK, apparently linked to coronavirus in children.

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy will brief national cabinet this week on the inflammatory syndrome that doctors in New York have reported has afflicted about 100 children, killing three of them.

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy. Picture: Getty Images

New York’s state governor Andrew Cuomo revealed the deaths of the three children – a five-year-old boy, a seven year-old boy and an 18-year-old girl – on Tuesday.

The inflammatory disease being seen by doctors resembles Kawasaki disease, which causes potentially deadly inflammation of the blood vessels. A 14-year-old British child died this week of the new illness, which has also been observed in a small number of cases in other countries in Europe.

US doctors are calling the illness Paediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome and believe it is associated with COVID-19. The illness causes prolonged fever, severe abdominal pain, diarrhoea or vomiting, difficulties breathing, racing heart rate and lethargy and confusion.

Children in New York were presenting with the illness four to six weeks after being initially exposed to coronavirus.

While Kawasaki disease affects a small number of children in Australia each year, similar cases of inflammatory disease linked to COVID-19 have not been observed in Australia.

However, Professor Murphy has asked the nation’s top paediatric experts to provide advice on the inflammatory illness, which he will present to national cabinet on Friday.

There have been 164 cases of COVID-19 in school-aged children aged between five and eighteen years in Australia. The disease generally causes only mild illness in children.

An Australian expert on Kawasaki disease, immunologist Angus Stock from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, said the inflammatory illness affects around 300 children in Australia each year and its causes are unknown.

But he said one theory was that a virus such as COVID-19 could trigger the disease.

“The exact cause(s) of Kawasaki disease have eluded researchers for over 50 years,” Dr Stock said. “This is in part, because it is likely that many viruses and bacteria (possibly including COVID-19) can activate this syndrome.

“In addition, there is an important genetic contribution, and it is likely that only a small fraction of COVID-19 infected children will ever develop this condition. However, to formalise this link it will be vital to continue to evaluate whether children who are infected with COVID-19 develop these Kawasaki disease like symptoms, and vice versa.”