Most New York children “probably” already have coronavirus and are serving as vectors to spread the disease, according to a New York pediatrician.
Dr. Dyan Hes at New York City’s Gramercy Pediatrics advised parents to assume their children have the virus if they contract even mild symptoms consistent with the disease.
Dr. Hes:
I think that probably 80 percent of the children have coronavirus. We are not testing children. I’m in New York City. I can’t get my patients tested. And we have to assume, if they are sick, they have coronavirus. Most of them, probably 80 to 90 percent of them, are asymptomatic. So, these numbers are so skewed. I think that the mortality rate is way, way less than 0.5 percent for children who have it because it is so prevalent. You have to remember thousands of kids die from flu a year. This is much, much less virulent in children.”
The problem with children is that they are so asymptomatic that they are spreading it. And our biggest mistake was that we didn’t close the public schools when we should have. So the children were the vectors to the teachers, who might be elderly or immunocompromised. You just have to keep that child at home for 14 days. Socially distance. When they go back out, if they’re above age 2, they should be wearing masks.”
“I’ve had patients whose parents have COVID, child has a 102.5 fever. At the beginning when we were doing this, we were sending them to the ER. They got turned away. They were not tested because we do not have enough tests and the kids are doing well.”
According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from April 6 children rarely contract severe illness from the coronavirus — and might not even display a fever or a cough. Children confirmed US coronavirus cases are 2,572 of the 149,082 cases reported as of April 2.
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