Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's stay sixty one. Since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic our main story. For a long time, it seemed like the only reassuring thing about the virus was that children were unlikely to get very sick from it. That idea is being challenged, though, as a new COVID nineteen related illness has begun to appear in children around the world. But first, here's what
happened today. New York City, the epicenter of the outbreak in the US, is likely to stay locked down into June. That's according to its bare build Blasio. Some parts of the eight will be able to reopen from Friday, but the city hasn't made enough progress in cutting down on new cases. That's even though hospital and intensive care admissions are falling. Deblasio also said health officials will turn to dozens of small, private, neighborhood medical practices to aid in testing,
contact tracing, and outpatient care around the country. A promising new COVID nineteen drug may be hard to come by. Gilead Sciences is donating vials of its COVID nineteen drug ram desevere to countries around the world, but the US
will get less than half. Gilead is donating about enough to treat seventy eight thousand hospitalized patients, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, but more than three hundred thousand patients in the US are eligible for emergency access to the drug that won't be available through the end of July. More data is showing the virus's disproportionate effects.
We know that Black Americans are dying at alarmingly high rates of COVID nineteen, but a new Bloomberg News analysis shows that majority black counties have triple the COVID nineteen death rate of others. The larger a county's share of Black residents, the worse the health outcomes get. In counties where African Americans are a higher proportion of the population than they are in the US, the death rate is roughly double the national average. That's according to an analysis
of Johns Hopkins University and Census Bureau data. In majority Black counties, deaths from coronavirus are more than triple. The disparities have only grown as the death toll has climbed. In South Korea, confirmed cases of Good nineteen suddenly increased after a lull that has sparked fears of a potential second wave of infections. The latest surge is tied to a single infected twenty nine year old who visited nightclubs
and Seoul. Since he did, at least fifty four cases have been traced to the clubs, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Authorities are estimating between six to seven thousand people could have been exposed to the virus from clubs between April nine and May six. Souls Mayor has ordered all nightclubs and similar establishments in the capital to close, and now our main story. Last week, a five year old boy in New York died from
COVID nineteen related complications. Dozens of other children are becoming sick with a similar cluster of symptoms. They mirror a rare condition called Kawasaki disease. The rise of this new threat to children opens up a terrifying possibility. Have we been wrong about how the disease affects kids. The accepted wisdom had been that children could transmit the virus but not get sick from it. The new illness is throwing
that assumption into question. Jason Gale talked to the world's leading expert on Kawasaki disease to help unpack what's going on. You might have heard of a pox body. It's a social gathering where children are deliberately exposed to an infectious disease, like chicken pox. These parties were sometimes done before vaccines were widely available to speed up immunity, in the belief that some illnesses experienced as children would result in less
severe disease then if the infection occurred in adulthood. But the practice has survived to modern times, usually hosted by vaccination skeptics, and there are signs the spirit of the Fox Party exists in our Washington State county, where people allegedly called the coronavirus from such events. Washington State health officials say that deliberately catching the pandemic virus can be incredibly dangerous for obvious reasons. It puts people that increased
risk for hospitalization and even death. It may also lead to an uptick in cases that will slow attempts to lift physical distancing measures and revive the economy. And there's still a lot we don't know about the virus that causes COVID nineteen, including any long term health effects. COVID nineteen seems to occur less frequently among children and they rarely get severely sick from it, but the risk for
children isn't zero. In fact, in Europe and now in the United States, critically ill kids have been ending up in intensive care units with shock like symptoms. It's yet another mysterious dimension of a disease we only heard about four months ago. Stephen Powers is National Medical Director for England in the National Health Service. He told reporters recently that these uncommon life threatening symptoms resemble Kawazarkie disease, a
rare childhood illness. We have become aware in the last few days of reports of severe illness in children which might be a Kawasaki like disease. So Kawasaki disease is a very rare inflammatory condition that occurs in children. The cause is not often known. Kawazarkie disease is characterized by inflammation of blood vessels throughout the body. It's the leading cause of acquired heart disease in American children, but with effective treatment, only a small percentage of patients is left
with lasting coronary uttery damage. On Wednesday last week in the lance at Medical Journal, Doctors in England describes an unprecedented cluster of eight children with something resembling the condition. One patient, a fourteen year old, needed life support but tragically died from a stroke. New York has had at least seventy three similar pediatric patients, three of them fatal.
France and Italy have had cases too. This is something that is appearing in cities around the globe now that have been heavily impacted by COVID nineteen disease in the adult population. That's Professor Jane Burns. She's one of the world's top experts on camazaki disease and leads a research center dedicated to studying it at the University of California, San Diego. She's seen thousands of cases over thirty five years, and the Rady Children's Hospital where she works treats eighty
to newcow psychi disease patients each year. Jane has yet to see any of these COVID nineteen related cases, but has been following the research closely, so we're getting a picture that this is something that occurs in probably genetically susceptible children as a reaction that involves previous exposure to the stars COVID two virus, and now we're seeing cases in the United States. Jane says these aren't COVID nineteen patients, but a majority have the virus or antibodies to the infection.
While the cases share some signs and symptoms of Kawasaki disease, the ones that have been described during the pandemic have some additional features, so it's not certain that what they have is Kawazaki. The diseases usually diagnosed and susceptible children by the time they start school. The average age of the patients in England was about nine. I have not seen a case, so let's be clear. But um, the descriptions are more than half of them coming in with
gastro intestinal symptoms, so vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea. Everybody has fever, so all these presentations are are significant persistent high fever. Also, six of the eight children in England were described as being of Afro Caribbean descent and five are boys. Jane says one in every sixty children in Japan gets Kwazoki disease, but no atypical cases have been seen there during the pandemic.
Even still, she says, there may be genetic, racial, and social disparities at play and these need to be properly investigated. The shock syndrome that these pediatric patients experience is also more severe than what's seen in Kawasaki disease or KAD for short, and they have certain clinical differences in the nature of the shock, the way the heart is behaving.
But the interesting hypothesis that this raises is that Kawasaki disease may be a syndrome that can actually be triggered in children of different genetic backgrounds by different environmental triggers. So there's an interesting question that perhaps stars Cove two virus is one of many other agents or just things in the environment that can trigger this syndrome in children
who perhaps have a slightly different genetic susceptibility. And these children who are now presenting with the shock syndrome, and the children who are getting the typical KD in these same communities, maybe the these our children who were never going to get Kawasaki disease in their life until they came across this virus that's been unleashed onto the world. Jane says, probably about one children worldwide have been diagnosed with the syndrome during the pandemic. That compares with some
four million COVID nineteen cases. What's really intriguing to me as a Kawasaki disease researcher is that at the same time these desperately ill children are being seen, there has been a dramatic uptick in the same communities of children
with typical Kawasaki disease. Whatever it is behind the syndrome that's sometimes leading to desperate cardiovasculate collapse, the effect that children are responding to the same treatment used for Kawasaki disease, Jane says patients can usually be cued in a matter of day with the infusions of a blood based therapy called immunoglobulin, but they need to get it within their first week of illness. The other good news is that the disease is relatively easy to diagnose. Parents can easily
make the diagnosis. You don't have to have to have gone to medical school. It's fever, bloodshot eyes, red lips and tongue, swollen hands and feet, and red palms and solos, and so it should be empowering to parents that they can recognize this disease and and ask for blood testing to support the diagnosis by looking for inflammation whatever it is that's causing this new life threatening illness and children. There's some solace in knowing that it's rare and that
it can be easily treated. It's a reminder, though, that we still have a lot to learn about the coronavirus and to reject any invitation to a virus potty. That was Bloomberg's Jason Gail, and that's our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The
Prognosis Daily edition is hosted by Me Laura Carlson. The show was produced by Me Topher Foreheads, Jordan Gospore and Magnus Henrikson. Today's main story was reported by Jason Gail. Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Francesca Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts, Thanks for listening.