On the 20th of April, the whole Baranov family went to different hospitals in Moscow with a confirmed diagnosis of coronavirus infection. On the night of April 21, mom and grandmother were hospitalized, the next day an ambulance took the child, after which the family father left for the hospital. Five-year-old Sasha Baranov had been ill with bronchitis a month before.
According to his parents, the boy was refused to be hospitalized several times because he had a negative coronavirus test in his only family member, and besides, he did not have any symptoms of the disease. Only on the third call did the ambulance take the child to Tushino Hospital No. 7. An X-ray revealed pneumonia, and a repeat smear was positive.
In the hospital, the boy spent 11 days, which, according to his mother, Vera, were "very difficult." “He even made plans for how to escape, because he was locked with a key in the ward. He called me, said that he had nightmares, his voice was teary all the time, ”the woman recalls.
Sasha is very afraid of injections, but the boy had to administer antibiotics. He hid from the doctors until they decided to replace the injections with a catheter. After two repeated smears were negative, Sasha was discharged. His parents were waiting for him at home, and his grandmother returned from the hospital. The family was removed from monitoring already in mid-May, but the Baranovs do not consider it possible to leave the house without extreme need: judging by blood tests, the boy may have repeated pneumonia. Of the whole story, the hardest moment, according to my mother, was that the whole family was divided.
- Vera Baranova with her son
- © Photo from the personal archive
If in a situation with common illnesses a child under three years old is required to be hospitalized with one of the parents, then in the event of a severe course of coronavirus infection he may be taken to the hospital and one. In accordance with the decision of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, minors with identified COVID-19 can be hospitalized if they cannot be isolated from risk groups or treated at home.
In addition, the placement of the child in the hospital is indicated if the body temperature has risen above 39 degrees or kept at 38.5 for five days. Without fail, children will be taken to the hospital if they have respiratory failure, tachycardia, hemorrhagic rash, convulsions, dehydration, cancer, blood and lung diseases.
However, the severe course of the disease, as doctors emphasize, is extremely rare in children with coronavirus infection. Most often, she is asymptomatic - as was the case with two-year-old Christina, daughter of Muscovite Natalia Lennik.
According to Natalia, the daughter most likely picked up the virus from her dad, who was forced to go to work during the isolation regime. “We called a private laboratory to the house, everyone checked. COVID-19 was confirmed in the husband and daughter. The husband had all the symptoms, similar to SARS, and the daughter had none at all, ”says Lennik.
As Natalya said, the child suffered the disease easily, although the parents, of course, were nervous. “I adequately assessed the situation. This is not the worst thing that we had to face in life, given that the daughter was born prematurely, seven months old, ”she admits. The two-week quarantine, which had to be served at home, had already ended for the family.
Faced with coronavirus and the children of football player Pavel Pogrebnyak. The athlete himself is in a Moscow hospital with bilateral pneumonia, and his wife Maria with three children is being treated at home. The woman writes on her Instagram that her sense of smell has completely disappeared, complains of general weakness and sore throat. In three children, the disease manifests itself differently. The eldest son does not have a fever, but he coughs violently, CT showed pneumonia. Medium vomited, temperature 37 degrees. And the younger one has no symptoms. “The healthiest of us,” writes Maria.
“Up to 50% of children carry the virus asymptomatically because they have a completely different immune system than an adult,” says Boris Blokhin, Honored Doctor of the Russian Federation, chief freelance pediatric consultant at the State Medical University of the Presidential Administration.
In his opinion, children without any concomitant diseases tolerate coronavirus easily: a small runny nose, low temperature, a rash on the skin is possible. However, any chronic diseases - diabetes, obesity, metabolic disorders - complicate the course of the disease.
More recently, statistics have appeared that in adolescents 14-16 years of age, the disease also proceeds more severely due to neglect of self-isolation.
There were severe cases when children fell on mechanical ventilation, but they all survived. Also recorded a few cases of death in patients with coronavirus infection of minors.
“Compared to the beginning of the epidemic, now we have begun to notice the appearance of atypical symptoms of the disease: inflammation of the tonsils in children from three months to 14 years old, a syndrome similar to Kawasaki’s disease (inflammation of the vascular walls with a primary lesion of the medium and small arteries - RT), muscle weakness ", The doctor adds.
According to the Ministry of Health, the majority of preschoolers and schoolchildren became infected within their families. Most often, the child becomes infected with the virus from an adult by airborne droplets. There were no cases of infected pregnant women transmitting the virus to an infant.
“Children can also be the main carriers of the virus, because they simply do not pay attention to single symptoms, such as vomiting, diarrhea, and slight nasal congestion. When schools and kindergartens were closed, there was a ban on visiting playgrounds, children were no longer carriers, ”said Boris Blokhin.
Of the total number of patients with coronavirus in Russia, children make up about 6%. At the same time, doctors note a positive trend at least among this population group. “In late March and early April, we controlled up to 50 families with children every day, now the epidemiological situation is much better, so at the moment we monitor up to 15 families at most,” says Lyudmila, a district doctor at a Moscow clinic.
Rospotrebnadzor published recommendations for parents in a pandemic. So, for example, it is worth protecting the child as much as possible from contacts with outsiders, avoiding public places, more often ventilate the room and at least once a week carry out wet cleaning. If you still have to leave the house with a child, then you need to explain to him that you can not touch his face or any objects (door handles, handrails and railings, walls, elevator buttons).
After returning home, you need to treat your hands with a disinfectant, take off your clothes, wash your hands and other exposed skin areas thoroughly with soap, paying particular attention to your face, rinse your mouth, and gently and slightly rinse your nose. And you can teach your child to sneeze, cough (in the bend of the elbow) and wash your hands during the game.