6-year-old battles illness possibly linked to COVID-19

Sara Garcia's 6-year-old son, Nolan, is hospitalized at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital battling a mysterious inflammatory illness that mimics symptoms of Kawasaki disease and appears to be linked to COVID-19.

Garcia took Nolan to the hospital several days ago with a high fever.

“It started off as just a fever for about three days,” she said. “The fever was bad. It went up to about 104.9 degrees.”

Nolan was immediately placed in the intensive care unit. At first, doctors thought he had Kawasaki disease because his symptoms were similar.

“It is definitely an inflammatory response to the virus because all of his inflammatory markers went up, a lot of heart enzymes went up,” Garcia said.

Nolan is one of a growing number of children nationwide who have developed an inflammatory syndrome related to COVID-19. Symptoms include persistent fever, abdominal problems, rash, vomiting, diarrhea, red eyes and swollen lymph nodes.

“I think as the weeks go on we will have many more kinds in the United States affected by this,” said Dr. Frank Belmonte of Advocate Health.

Belmonte said in several of the cases, kids test negative for COVID-9 but positive for the antibodies, meaning the syndrome is showing up later. Nolan Garcia has tested positive for COVID-19, but his mom has no idea how he was exposed.

“We did all the social distancing, we did not go on play dates, we didn't go anywhere,” she said. “I just don't know.”

Nolan is expected to make a full recovery.