Children also face long-term consequences of Covid: Dutch hospital

Between 300 and 400 children in the Netherlands suffered serious complaints after a coronavirus infections, the Emma Children's Hospital in Amsterdam estimates. The hospital, which forms part of Amsterdam UMC, opened an outpatient clinic especially for children with long-term symptoms after Covid-19.

Like adults who suffer from Long Covid, these children are still sick months after their infection. "On the whole, children get sick very little from corona. But there is a small group on whom the impact of the disease is very large," Suzanne Terheggen-Lagro, pediatric pulmonologist and co-initiator of the outpatient clinic, said to newspaper AD.

"Our estimate is that in the Netherlands there may be 300 to 400 children who have serious complaints after a Covid-19 infection," pediatrician Giske Biesbroek said to the newspaper. About 130 of these kids developed Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) between two and six weeks after Covid-19. For half of them, MIS-C landed them in the ICU.

MIS-C generally presents as a sudden high fever a few weeks after the Covid-19 infection. 90 percent also suffer from abdominal complaints, like vomiting and diarrhea. "In addition, they can get a skin rash, red eyes, cracked lips, and in a large part of the children, it can also hit the heart," Biesbroek said. 

The specialists at the Emma Children's Hospital called on doctors to be on alert for MIS-C. "It is a rare disease. A GP will probably only encounter MIS-C once in his life," Biesbroek said. Which could result in kids being misdiagnosed at first.