[Tapper:] Tragically, even more children are getting sick from a mystery illness that could be connected to coronavirus. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York says that his state alone is up to at least 93 cases. And at least three children in New York have died, with possible other cases across the country. I want to bring in Dr. Steven Kernie. He's chief of pediatric critical care medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He oversaw the treatment of two dozen of these patients. Dr. Kernie, thanks so much for joining us for this awful subject. Certainly, when you look at the number of cases, it appeared children were getting sick from coronavirus in much lower numbers, but could it be that it's just presenting as just a different kind of illness?
[Dr. Steve Kernie, New York Presbyterian Hospital:] Well, what we think is happening is that you're exactly right. Certainly, the acute coronavirus infection did does affect children much less, meaning, unless they have really serious underlying medical conditions, they don't seem to get really sick from it. What we're seeing now is something not in kids with serious underlying medical conditions, but really kids without a lot of issues, but have been exposed to the coronavirus sometime in the past, we think sometime somewhere between three and six weeks previous to when they're presenting now.
[Tapper:] And your hospital has seen about two dozen of these children with this mysterious illness. You call it pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome. How did you make the connection to the coronavirus?
[Kernie:] Yes. And I apologize for the name. We don't call it that. But that seems to be what people have adopted. What we first started seeing about two weeks ago were children who came in what we call the generalized inflammatory state that was manifest by high fever and kind of a diffuse body rash, and they appeared ill and, oftentimes, they would have cracked lips and injection of the eyes, really high heart rates and low blood pressure. And we'd have to bring them into the ICU, give them I.V. fluids, give them medications to help their heart rate or their heart work better, and then see how they recovered. How we made the association with coronavirus was that, initially, and even now, less than half the kids we see with this are testing positive for the coronavirus itself, meaning, the PCR test that detects RNA from the virus is oftentimes negative. But now that we can do rapid antibody testing, we know that all of the children that we have seen have been exposed to the coronavirus. It's just sometime after they have been acutely infected.
[Tapper:] A new study out today found that 48 children with COVID-19 who had been admitted to pediatric intensive care units, 23 percent of them had a failure of two or more organ systems, the most common one being the lung system. Have you seen similar findings in children with this illness?
[Kernie:] So, what we're not seeing is a lot of lung disease. So, with the acute COVID infection, particularly in adults, pneumonia, and something we call ARDS, bad respiratory failure, is what seems to be the cause of them going into the hospital and what they typically die from. In children, it seems to be different, meaning it's more of a systemic problem that is a vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels, and in turn affects how well their heart functions. So, yes, all organ systems can be involved. And we have seen many of them, but typically not the lungs.
[Tapper:] Is there evidence coronavirus spread in the same households of the children with this mysterious illness?
[Kernie:] Yes, there is, meaning that, typically, when you get a history from the family, somebody either had suspected or confirmed coronavirus infection, oftentimes a parent or an older adult, in the household several weeks beforehand. What we're not seeing is that this manifestation of coronavirus, it doesn't seem to be appearing in siblings, so that brothers and sisters aren't getting it, maybe one kid out of the family. We still believe even though we have seen two or three dozen cases at our hospital, we still think, given the number of children who've been exposed to coronavirus, it really remains a rare complication.
[Tapper:] So this illness seems to be affecting mostly children under the age of 5. Why do you think that is?
[Kernie:] Well, that's not been our experience.
[Tapper:] OK.
[Kernie:] So we have really seen children of all ages from yes, some under 5, but up into their teens.
[Tapper:] OK. Dr. Steven Kernie, thank you so much. Best of luck battling this cruel new twist on this disease. A new major warning from the World Health Organization, calling one coronavirus mitigation theory dangerous. That's next.