Still no officially established link but important new information. The twenty children and adolescents affected in Ile-de-France by a serious inflammatory disease which causes concern have all been in contact with the new coronavirus, said Thursday medical officials, stressing despite everything that the causal link n was not established.
This Thursday evening, Jérôme Salomon, the Director General of Health, also spoke of a "serious alert" and of the investigations in progress concerning "children who are currently undergoing tests".
The information left last weekend from England, with a report from the public health service reporting an increase in the number of children with symptoms resembling Kawasaki disease, a vascular syndrome whose cause remains indeterminate. A small number of similar cases have also been mentioned in the United States, Spain or Belgium.
"In contact with this virus at one time or another"
Regarding France, "more than twenty children", aged 3 to 17, have been listed in Ile-de-France since April 15, said Dr. Sylvain Renolleau, head of the intensive care unit at Necker Hospital sick children, whereas in normal times there is less than one such case per month.
"These children have all been in contact with this virus (the new coronavirus) at one time or another," he said during a telephone press conference organized by the AP-HP.
This contact has been proven either by a positive but "weak" virological test, therefore rather at the end of infection, or by a positive serological test (presence of antibodies), which also proves that they were contaminated in the preceding weeks, said the doctor.
At first, the medical authorities of the various countries concerned had indicated that some patients were positive, others were not.
No certainty on "a direct causal link"
Despite everything, "we don't have all the arguments of certainty to say that there is a direct causal link" between the new coronavirus and these unusual cases, added his colleague Damien Bonnet, head of the pediatric medical cardiology service. .
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However, doctors have hypothesized that the onset of this inflammatory disease is similar to the cytokine storm described in adults, a runaway immune response that causes severe respiratory cases.
"In children, it is also an exaggerated inflammatory reaction, but which appears later, at the 3rd or 4th week and which is rather an attack of the heart muscle," estimated Professor Rémi Salomon, president of the medical commission. establishment of the AP-HP.
VIDEO. Olivier Véran on the situation of children with symptoms resembling Kawasaki disease
The affected children first experienced several days of high fever and abdominal pain, sometimes with a rash, before developing heart and circulatory failure.
Children hospitalized in Ile-de-France "have all evolved to date favorably in three or four days of intensive care," said Professor Renolleau. Some cases have also been listed in this province (Nancy, Reims, Chambéry, Lyon, Montpellier) but "in much smaller numbers," he said.