Two more young people in New York have died of a coronavirus-linked inflammatory syndrome — a “truly disturbing” development that’s the “last thing” parents living in the epicenter of the pandemic need, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday.
The fatalities — a 7-year old in Westchester and a Suffolk County teenager — were among the 73 stricken statewide by the mystery illness, which mirrors the rare inflammatory condition Kawasaki disease, and toxic shock syndrome.
Cuomo had previously announced that a 5-year-old boy died of the disease Thursday at Mount Sinai’s Kravis Children’s Hospital on the Upper East Side.
“With all that is going on, with all the anxiety we have, now for parents to have to worry about whether or not their youngster was infected,” Cuomo said at his daily press briefing in Manhattan, a day after quietly extending the state’s lockdown order until at least June 7.
“One of the few rays of good news was young people weren’t affected,” the governor added. “We’re not so sure that is the fact anymore.”
The illness, appears to be triggered by a coronavirus infection, causes inflammation in the walls of some blood vessels .
“I never expected this to be so serious,” Queens dad Roup Hardowar — whose 8-year-old son survived the illness — told The Post after watching the governor’s briefing.
His son Jayden likely contracted the virus in late April, when his pediatrician treated him for a brief bout of fever and diarrhea.
Then, on April 29, the boy called out weakly from his bed in their Richmond Hill home. He had lost the strength to breath, and was turning blue.
The family called an ambulance, and his big brother Tyron began performing CPR, which he’d learned in the Boy Scouts.
“I was thinking he wasn’t going to make it,” Tyron, 15, told The Post. “But then I started thinking, he has to make it … I would do anything for him.”
Jayden had suffered an inflammation of his heart that led to cardiac arrest.
“We had a kid in the house who was pretty much dead,” the still-shaken dad remembered. “My wife was crying. But Tyron was calm and collected. The 911 operator was on the phone telling him what to do.”
They can still only “visit” the boy by phone at Long Island Hospital, where he has been removed from a ventilator and is recovering well enough to come home Monday.
Thanks to Tyron’s quick actions, he does not appear to have suffered brain damage.
“No one expected this to be happening to children,” the father said.
Cuomo said that at the request of the CDC, the state is helping to develop the national criteria for identifying and responding to the new COVID-related illness.
The State Department of Health is also partnering with the NY Genome Center and Rockefeller University to conduct a genome and RNA sequencing study to better understand the syndrome.
New Yorkers should seek immediate care if a child suffers a prolonged fever, difficulty feeding or drinking or severe abdominal pain, diarrhea or vomiting, officials warned.
Other markers are lips or skin turning blue, a racing heart, chest pain and troubled breathing.
Lethargy, irritability or confusion may also be present.
“I cannot be any clearer: please seek care immediately if your child is experiencing a persistent fever, rash, abdominal pain or vomiting,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.
The city’s 10,000 health care providers have been instructed to report symptoms to health officials, he said.
All city hospitals are now conducting COVID-19 antibody tests for all children with related symptoms, he said.
“It’s definitely scary,” said one Manhattan mom as she walked with her daughter in a stroller carefully covered with clear plastic.
“As you can see she’s in the plastic, we are being very careful.”
Deaths from the coronavirus ticked up statewide, with 226 fatalities reported over the past 24 hours, Cuomo said.
The numbers were up from the 216 deaths reported the previous day. The statewide death toll now stands at 21,270.
“This is not welcome news, and it has been heartbreaking every day,” Cuomo said of Friday’s deaths, which included 173 in hospitals and 53 in nursing homes.
Intubations continued to fall along with new hospitalizations, which stood at 572, the lowest number since March 20, breaking the 600- plus trend reported the two previous days.
Meanwhile Saturday, nine protesters, toting signs that read, “Not Afraid to Fight” and Reopen NY” were busted outside City Hall for not obeying social distancing guidelines, sources told The Post.
New York’s lockdown, enacted in March, was already extended through May 15. Some parts of the state will be able to phase in re-openings sooner than June 7 if they are able to hit a series of critical benchmarks showing the bug is contained, Cuomo said.
Additional reporting by Julia Marsh, Khristina Narizhnaya and Post wires