About 30 children in Israel, including three in intensive care, are currently hospitalized due to multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a rare and life-threatening COVID-19 complication.

The syndrome, which may appear weeks after the coronavirus infection, can cause inflammation in multiple organs, although most of the reported cases in Israel have been related to heart inflammation and some to liver inflammation.

The children in intensive care are nine and ten-year-old girls and a 16-year-old boy. They are hospitalized at the Kaplan Medical Center in Rechovot.

The ten-year-old girl, who is Chareidi, is in serious but stable condition and the two others are in moderate condition, according to Dr. Eli Shapiro, director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Kaplan Medical Center.

“The children are receiving intensive treatment with drugs intended to regulate their immune system,” Dr. Shapiro told Channel 12 News.

“There have been about 30 cases recently,” Dr. Uri Bella, director of Kaplan’s pediatric emergency department, told Channel 13 News. “It’s a syndrome that awakens the immune system and attacks the body, affecting many systems. The children arrive at the hospital complaining of stomach aches, chest pain and we see damage to their hearts and livers.”

Other symptoms of the syndrome include a high fever, rashes, a red or swollen tongue and conjunctivitis.

Cases of MIS-C have been reported around the world and some children have died due to it.  Fortunately, the majority of children fully recover from the disease but the long-term effects are unknown.

In April, a Chareidi girl from Elad was critically ill due to MIS-C but, Baruch Hashem, is now recovered although she still is monitored by cardiologists. In June, a 26-year-old Chareidi man passed away as a result of the syndrome.

In the US, over 1,000 cases of MIS-C have been reported in the US to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) since the beginning of the pandemic and 20 of those children have died.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)