NEW YORK – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Saturday said the state Department of Health is now investigating what appear to be COVID-19 related illnesses among very young children.
Overall, the state's number of new cases and hospitalizations continue to drop, though more than two hundred people are still dying every day and that number has held steady for the past week.
Cuomo said there are 73 cases of very young children, infants and toddlers, who are being treated for what doctors believe are illnesses related to COVID-19.
“It's not respiratory,” the governor said, “so it may be that we'll find there are more cases that we didn't identify before. It's an inflammation of the blood vessels that can impact the heart.”
Three children have died so far of illnesses that doctors say resemble Kawasaki disease or Toxic Shock Syndrome-like symptoms.
The CDC has asked New York's Department of Health to develop national criteria to be made available to other states.
Meanwhile, Delaware County announced Saturday that it has received a report from the state identifying another positive case of COVID-19, but that new case proved to be a person living in another area. Two local people remain hospitalized and 12 others are in mandatory quarantine.
In his daily press conference, the governor said the baseline study of 15,000 New Yorkers is complete. Preliminary results indicate that 19.9% of the New York City's population has been exposed to COVID-19. The rate of infection among the city's transit workers is lower, averaging about 14.2%.
Cuomo also announced that churches in low income neighborhoods of New York City will begin opening as testing sites to help service minority communities, which have been harder hit by the pandemic.
