RICHMOND, VA — On Friday, the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) announced that an adolescent resident in the Southside Health District has died after testing positive for COVID-19.
This is the first reported COVID-19 death of a child in the Commonwealth. VDH said they will disclose no further information about the teenager to protect the privacy of the patient’s family.
“We were extremely saddened to learn of the loss of the state’s first adolescent with COVID-19. On behalf of all of us at VDH, I extend sincere condolences to the teenager’s family and loved ones,” said State Health Commissioner M. Norman Oliver, M.D., M.A. “No age group is immune from the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and this unfortunate event, along with the increasing numbers of coronavirus cases we are seeing in some areas of the Commonwealth, is a reminder that we all need to do our part to help slow the spread of virus in the community.”
While the effects of the virus on children seems to not be as severe as they are for older individuals, it is still a mystery as to what the damage caused by the virus totals. Several teenagers have died from COVID-19 and doctors continue to see different reactions from children after testing positive for COVID-19.
In a paper published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Dr. Naftali Kaminski, the Boehringer-Ingelheim Endowed Professor of Internal Medicine and chief of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, and colleagues shared findings related to children’s surprising immunity to the virus. They detailed how factors including allergies, asthma, the common cold, and existing vaccines may be having a protective effect.
Carrie Lucas, an assistant professor of immunobiology at Yale, is looking at blood samples from the small percentage of children who develop the rare condition known as Multi-Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, or MIS-C, in response to COVID-19. Her lab is analyzing blood samples for molecular and genetic clues to figure out why a certain subset of kids are most at risk.
“This is different from other viruses that affect kids more seriously,” Kaminski said. “It’s an interesting conundrum and could provide implications for therapeutics.”
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