April 14, 2020 | 9: 38 pm
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2 kids wearing masks in Central Park.
Taidgh Barron/NY Post
A lot of New york city kids “most likely” currently have coronavirus and are functioning as vectors to spread the disease, according to one New York pediatrician.
Dr. Dyan Hes at New york city City’s Gramercy Pediatrics advised moms and dads to assume their children have the virus if they contract even mild symptoms constant with the disease.
” I think that most likely 80 percent of the kids have coronavirus. We are not evaluating kids. I’m in New York City. I can’t get my patients evaluated,” Hes said throughout an interview at CBS News.
” And we need to presume, if they are ill, they have coronavirus. The majority of them, probably 80 to 90 percent of them, are asymptomatic.”
But the variety of contaminated kids is unidentified due to the fact that a lot of children don’t display any signs, she stated– which might change COVID-19’s mortality rate.
” So, these numbers are so skewed. I believe that the mortality rate is way, method less than 0.5 percent for kids who have it because it is so common,” Hes stated.
” You need to remember countless kids die from flu a year. This is much, much less virulent in kids.”
The larger risk depends on those infected children passing the infection to a lot more susceptible populations, like the senior or those with pre-existing health conditions.
” The problem with children is that they are so asymptomatic that they are spreading it. And our greatest mistake was that we didn’t close the public schools when we must have,” stated Hes.
” So the children were the vectors to the instructors, who might be senior or immunocompromised.”
Hes stated moms and dads must just take their kids to a doctor for set up vaccine check outs or if they’re exhibiting shortness of breath.
“[Y] ou just have to keep that kid at home for 14 days. Socially distance,” she added. “When they go back out, if they’re above age 2, they should be using masks.”
Children rarely agreement severe illness from the coronavirus– and may not even show a fever or a cough, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from April 6.
Children comprise a small fraction of verified US coronavirus cases– 2,572 of the 149,082 cases reported since April 2 for which the patient’s age was known, or about 1.7 percent.
However Hes says the real number of pediatric cases are not known due to the fact that of the minimal testing available and the reasonably minor threat to kids.
” We have zero tests for kids. We have absolutely no swabs,” she said.
” I’ve had clients whose parents have actually COVID, child has a 102.5 fever. At the start when we were doing this, we were sending them to the ER. They got turned away. They were not checked because we do not have enough tests and the kids are doing well.”