“Compared to other age groups, children are more likely to have no symptoms,” says Murray.īecause kids may carry the virus and not have symptoms, screening questions at daycares and schools may be unreliable in controlling outbreaks, explains Jeremy Friedman, associate paediatrician-in-chief at Sick Kids hospital in Toronto. Of course, you won’t know to keep your kid away from others if they don’t show symptoms in the first place, and that’s a very real possibility. “A ny o ther time in our lives, we wouldn’t have necessarily worried about cold symptoms, but now we have to,” says Murray. If your kid has a persistent cough or a low fever, you’ll want to keep them at home and call off the grandparent or babysitter visit until you’re given the go-ahead by your child’s doctor. She wouldn’t even have been sent home by the school nurse,” says Davis.īecause kids infected with COVID-19 often have mild symptoms, Murray says it’s important to consider any kid with symptoms that could be COVID-19 a serious risk to others. (She wasn’t tested for coronavirus, because by the time she showed symptoms, the testing criteria had changed and they were no longer testing kids under 12.) “For her it was like a very mild cold. Her cough lasted about two weeks, while Isaac’s went on for three weeks after his fever broke. His 4-year-old sister, however, had a much milder course of the illness, with sniffles and a cough, and a temperature that hovered between 99F and 99.5F. He would sleep between the coughing fits, but it went on all night long.” Isaac also experienced some other strange symptoms, including burning eyes, a sore back, and, just one day, vomiting. “ During the day, if he tried to do any activity it would cause the coughing, but he was perfectly content to be cuddled up on the couch and watching a show,” recalls his mom. Cough was the first sign of his illness, followed quickly by a high fever that lasted 8 days, says the Houston mom. Jennifer Davis’s 6-year-old son, Isaac, had COVID-19 in early April. These are being called “COVID toes” and can occur with or without other symptoms.
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#COVID SYMPTOMS IN KIDS SKIN#
Some kids also have skin symptoms, specifically reddish purple toes that might look frost-bitten. Other possible symptoms include stomach upset, runny noses and shortness of breath. When kids show symptoms of COVID-19, they are often the same ones you hear in adults-most commonly a fever, cough and sore throat, says Elizabeth Murray, a paediatrician at the Golisano Children’s Hospital in Rochester, New York. Here’s what you need to know about kids’ coronavirus symptoms and what you should do if you think your child has the virus. Still, as cities start to open up, and kids begin to attend daycares and schools again, it’s normal to worry your kid might be exposed to the virus-especially as news reports are describing a scary inflammatory condition that’s linked to COVID-19. The fact that her kids’ experience with the virus was much less intense than hers is not surprising-while COVID-19 can cause severe illness, it’s common for kids’ coronavirus symptoms to be mistaken for a run-of-the-mill infection.
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But while her two children recovered within days, Rowello, a 29-year-old who lives in Moorestown, New Jersey and has no pre-existing health conditions, went on to experience a serious case of the illness that left her frequently short of breath and mostly bed-ridden for a month. She thought, “If this is COVID-19, then it’s not going to be that bad for me if I get it,” she recalls. Her spouse and 10-year old son had been coughing too, but they weren’t at all fatigued and had no other symptoms. In early March, when Lauren Rowello’s 7-year-old got a fever and started coughing, COVID-19 briefly crossed her mind.