The WHO said on Friday studying a possible link between Covid-19 disease and Kawasaki disease, an inflammatory syndrome affecting children which caused the first death in France.
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A "plausible" link
"Initial hypotheses indicate that this syndrome could be linked to Covid-19 (...). We call on all clinicians around the world to work with their national authorities and the WHO to be alert and better understand this syndrome in children, "said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a virtual press conference in Geneva.
The association with a SARS-CoV-2 infection has not yet been established, but it seems plausible, "said the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in a report released on Friday. He called this new pediatric disease "multi-systemic inflammatory syndrome (which can affect all organs, editor's note) temporally associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection".
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Covid-19 positive cases
The hypothesis of a link is supported by the fact that these pediatric cases broke out during the Covid-19 epidemic and that they were often tested positive, with PCR tests (for an infection in progress) and / or serology (for past infection). "These results are very much in favor of a link between infection with SARS-CoV-2 and this pathology", judges the French health agency Santé Publique France in a point published Thursday evening.
"A delayed and excessive immune response"
She estimates that in affected children, this disease occurs "within an average time (...) of four weeks after infection" by the coronavirus. Scientists hypothesize that the immune system of these children has run out of steam a few weeks after infection with the coronavirus. "They had the virus, their bodies fought it. But now there is this delayed and excessive immune response," said pediatrician Sunil Sood of the Cohen Children's Medical Center in New York to AFP. This new disease intrigues the world health authorities, especially since children are only very little affected by the severe forms of Covid-19.