The World Health Organization is urging doctors around the globe to look for a rare illness in children that could be associated with the coronavirus.
“I call on all clinicians worldwide to work with your national authorities and WHO to be on the alert and better understand this syndrome in children,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted on Saturday.
The organization released a scientific brief on the emerging condition, which it is calling “multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children and adolescents.”
WHO defined the syndrome as occurring in children under 19. Symptoms include a fever that lasts three days or longer, rash, inflammation, hypotension or shock, and gastrointestinal problems, among other things.
“We need more information collected in a systematic way because with the initial reports, we’re getting a description of what this looks like, which is not always the same,” Maria Van Kerkhove of WHO said during a press briefing on Friday. “And in some children, they tested positive for COVID-19 and other children have not. So we do not know if this is associated with COVID-19.”
The brief is similar to one put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this week, but the CDC definition includes patients up to 21 years of age and said that it is not known whether the syndrome also occurs in adults.
Health officials report more than 4.5 million cases of the coronavirus worldwide, with nearly a third of the infections recorded in the U.S. More than 87,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Fox News reported late Friday that the White House is on the brink of restoring some of the U.S. funds to WHO following criticisms from President Donald Trump of the group’s handling of the pandemic.
According to a five-page draft letter to Tedros, the administration will “agree to pay up to what China pays in assessed contributions.”
But Trump on Saturday pushed back against the report, saying that all funds remain frozen while he makes his final decision, which he earlier said should come next week.
Trump tweeted that the proposition is “just one of numerous concepts being considered under which we would pay 10% of what we have been paying over many years, matching much lower China payments.”
The U.S. previously contributed roughly $400 million to WHO annually. Trump put a pause on U.S. funding for the organization last month after accusing it of being “China-centric.” He said the U.S. would be assessing WHO’s “role in mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”
