CENTRAL VALLEY, Calif. (KSEE) – Despite what many people think, children can get COVID-19 and in some cases, get severely sick from it, said Valley Children’s doctors and its CEO on Thursday during a virtual presser.
Todd Suntrapak, the president and CEO of Valley Children’s Healthcare, said many people believe children don’t become very ill or can’t be at risk of death by COVID-19, but that is “factually inconsistent with the experience at Valley Children’s.”
As of Wednesday, Valley Children’s had conducted 6,473 COVID-19 cases and seen an 8% positivity rate.
They’ve had 69 COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization, and 17% of those 69 patients have needed ICU care.
Dr. David Christensen, the chief physician executive at Valley Children’s, said many of the hospitalizations have occurred most recently.
“There’s been a ramp up in cases over the last month of kids with COVID,” Christensen said. “It is true that these kids can get very sick, especially if they have underlying health conditions.”
He said some of those conditions include congenital heart disease or respiratory illnesses, such as cystic fibrosis.
RELATED: Increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations at Valley Children’s, doctors see more MIS-C cases too
The hospital isn’t just seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases. They’re also seeing a rise in cases of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C).
Valley Children’s saw its first case in May. Now they’ve seen eight.
“Thought to be an inflammatory response to the COVID-19 infection with manifestations that present weeks after the infection and could affect different systems, different organs in the body, and many times it could be serious enough to require admission into the intensive care unit or the hospital in general,” said Dr. Nael Mhaissen, the medical director for pediatric infectious diseases at Valley Children’s.
RELATED: Q&A with Valley Children’s doctor on COVID-19 and effects it can have in children
Christensen said kids who get the virus range anywhere from two weeks old to late teens with the median age at 9 years old.
The hospital showed a chart at the start of the presentation that showed the increase in pediatric COVID-19 cases, with Fresno County leading other Valley counties.
Suntrapak said in the central part of the state, about 12% of cases are kids between the ages of 0 and 17.
“In our valley, there’s actually a little bit higher incidents of COVID-19 in kids, certainly those data which we are confident about do not support a statement that children do not get COVID-19,” Suntrapak said.
Suntrapak said a narrative that is focused on how small the risk is numerically to children is “objectionable.”
“Much of the narrative that is taking place, both in our valley, in our state and nationally, related to children and the risk to children of COVID-19 foundationally we object to,” he said.
Christensen said in some cases, they’ve used Remdesevir to treat patients with COVID-19.
As of Thursday morning, they had enough left to treat five patients.
Valley Children’s has also accepted pediatric patients from other hospitals in the Central Valley that have needed to make bed space for more COVID-19 patients.
“We are in a surge mode,” Suntrapak said. “I anticipate that will continue given the trends we have seen over the last couple of months and we’ll be ready.”
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