It Is Not True That Children Cannot Get Covid-19!

We are reviewing a Facebook post claiming that children cannot get infected with Covid-19. The author of the post asks how children can be tested and wear masks, when “they do not get infected with Covid-19 at all”.

This is not true. Both in this country and in the world, children get infected with Covid-19. Harvard reports that children, including those at a very young age, may develop Covid-19. Many of them have no symptoms, but those who are infected may have mild symptoms such as fever, fatigue and cough. Some children suffer serious complications, but this is less common. Children with comorbidities may be at increased risk of serious illness.

These serious complications are called Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome and are life-threatening because they involve problems with the heart and other organs in the body! In this covid-induced syndrome, the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal tract may be affected by inflammation. Symptoms of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome include fever lasting more than 2 days, skin rash, red eyes, abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea, swollen lymph nodes and neck pain, red lips, strawberry-like red tongue, swollen palms and feet, irritability, and unusual weakness.

Not only can children get Covid-19, but when they do, it can lead to complications later on. Dr Aspazija Sofijanova, director of the Clinic for Children’s Diseases in Skopje, stated in an interview:

Children suffer much more in the post-covid phase. We witnessed such a series of cases in November, where two or three children were hospitalized in very difficult condition. They were not PCR positive, but they had a high titer of antibodies which caused terrible complications. And we thought the virus had bypassed children, but it did not happen this way. It happened that the post-covid conditions of children with high antibody titers affected the gastrointestinal tract, appendix, heart and brain, and this is much more frightening. We have seen two such post-covid conditions. One was on supportive therapy, even though he was only three years old, and that therapy is now given to adults in severe cases. The child came in an extremely severe condition with anemia, with a rapid pulse, and had to receive oxygen concentrate. This means that the post-covid phase that the child went through is much more dramatic than what his parents went through.

Not only can children get Covid-19, but they can also transmit the coronavirus to adults in people with many chronic diseases, which in turn are more susceptible to complications. Therefore, at the beginning of the pandemic, the government introduced a curfew in which young people and children were allowed to leave their homes at different times of the day compared to adults and the elderly so as not to interfere and interact, which is a risk of transmission.

There are also vaccines for children, and so far only the one from the manufacturer Pfizer has been approved for children from 12 to 16 years old.

The Mayo Clinic in the United States cites data from the American Academy of Pediatrics that in the United States, 13 percent of all cases of Covid-19 are in children.

Due to all the above facts, we consider that the post that is the subject of our review is false and spreads disinformation.

This article has been produced as part of the Rapid Response to Vaccine Disinformation Project, implemented by the Metamorphosis Foundation. It was originally published in Truthmeter, and is made possible by the support of (BTD – The Balkan Trust for Democracy, a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States). The content of this article is the sole responsibility of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Metamorphosis, BTD or their partners.

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