Kawasaki and Similar COVID-Related Syndromes in Children

This week’s expert:
Prof David Burgner, Paediatric infectious diseases physician, (NHMRC) Senior Research Fellow, Honorary (NHFA) Future Leader Fellow, a Professorial Fellow at Melbourne University, Consultant at Monash Children’s Hospital, Researcher at The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne

Drawn from an interview with Prof Burgner by Dr Harry Nespolon on the Healthed podcast Going Viral.

• There have recently been a small number of case reports of children experiencing a newly described inflammatory syndrome believed to be related to COVID-19. This syndrome has a number of different names including PIMS-TS (paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome temporally associated with SARS-Cov-2).

• PIMS-TS is fundamentally an inflammatory vasculitis and has features similar to both Kawasaki disease and toxic shock syndrome, but is exceedingly rare. To date, no cases have been reported in Australia.