Child Dies Of Rare Condition Linked To COVID-19, Health Officials Issue Advisory

A child in Wisconsin died of a rare condition linked to COVID-19, forcing health officials to issue an advisory Friday. The child is the first in the state to die of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (MIS-C), media reports said.

State health officials said the child died sometime within the last month. The exact age of the child was not given, but authorities said that the victim was under 10 years old. The child, who has not been identified, was from southeastern Wisconsin.

Tom Haupt, a state respiratory disease epidemiologist, says the child was one of 183 Wisconsin children who contracted the disease. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had recorded 6,851 cases as of Jan. 31. Officials said they’re still investigating whether the child who died from MIS-C was vaccinated, according to Madison.

According to health officials, MIS-C is a rare but serious condition associated with COVID-19 in which different body parts become inflamed. The parts affected include the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs.

In an advisory, the state urged doctors to be on the lookout for MIS-C in children and to “not delay” in seeking expert advice if necessary. Officials also said that several children have been diagnosed with MIS-C despite being fully vaccinated.

"Clinicians should not delay seeking expert advice while waiting for results of these investigations. Early recognition by pediatricians and prompt referral to an in-patient specialist, including to critical care, is essential. This syndrome should be considered by pediatricians and specialists, particularly when other microbial etiologies have not been identified," the advisory read.

The syndrome can also afflict children who have shown no COVID symptoms.

"The (children are) all universally very sick. They have fever, chest pain, vomiting, diarrhea," Greg Demuri, a pediatric infectious disease doctor with UW Health in Madison, said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "The most significant component is a weakening of the heart muscle. We've had to put a few children on heart medications."

Demuri also said that much about the syndrome remains unknown. Researchers are aggressively trying to solve the riddle of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children related to COVID-19.

As of Wednesday, the 7-day daily average of new COVID-19 cases in the country was 147,000 cases per day, a decrease of 40 percent. New hospitalizations dropped by 28 percent over the previous week, to an average of 9,500 per day. Deaths decreased by 9 percent, to 2,200 per day.