Has anyone seen any information how this virus affects infants and toddlers ages <1-3?
This is obviously totally anecdotal, because the UK isn't testing anyone but the most extreme ICU cases and - to some tiny degree - healthcare workers. Anyway, we've been isolating for about three weeks because my son (who'll be three in June) developed a persistent cough.
In the space of about three days he went from "fine but coughing a lot" to "definitely under the weather" to "oh shit he can't breathe, he's gone limp, and he's burning up". We wound up having to break quarantine to take him to hospital, where he was examined by a doctor in a full suit and mask, while he was struggling to breathe. They were inclined it wasn't COVID-19, so they prescribed him antibiotics and an inhaler on the assumption that it was some other respiratory infection. But they couldn't rule it out.
The next two nights at home were pretty grim. His fever was 39c (about 102f) at points and he could barely speak in between coughs. We're not co-sleeping parents, and he's literally never slept in our bed before, but those two nights we had no choice. We didn't want to let him out of our sight.
After that he started to pick up: his temperature dropped after a couple of days, and about a fortnight later he no longer had a cough except in extreme cases of running around outside in the cold. So either the antibiotics worked - meaning it was a bacterial infection - or it was a virus he fought off on his own.
For a while I
definitely thought he had COVID-19. The symptoms aligned perfectly, and he was the most ill I've ever seen him - and more ill than our daughter, who's nearly 6, has ever been. But the part that now has me thinking it wasn't? None of the rest of us have had so much as a sniffle. And while we're obviously teaching the kids good hygiene and hand-washing, when he was in our bed those two nights he was basically coughing directly into my nose and eyes all night. So given how infectious the coronavirus is, I guess perhaps that wasn't it.
If that
wasn't it, though, I hope I don't have to see my kids, my wife, or anyone I know get it. Because we're not hypochondriac parents: my wife used to be a children's nurse, and we wouldn't have taken him to A&E if we hadn't believed it was necessary. It's horrible watching someone not being able to breathe. And whether our son had this virus or something else, that episode - and the hospital trip - gave me a really heightened appreciation for how awful it must be to die in a room, alone, fighting for breath.
I know intubated patients are in induced comas, but still, it's a horrendous thought. And nearly 600 people went that way in the UK today alone.
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www.cnn.com
fortune.com
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