A Toronto pediatrician says that she is seeing a rising number of COVID positive patients whose only symptom is a skin rash, underscoring the need to test your children for the virus even if you think they have something else.
She said that over the last few weeks she has seen a significant increase in the number of children presenting with what appears to be hand, foot and mouth disease also testing positive for COVID-19.
Kulik said that while some of the children could have simultaneous infections, it seems more likely that the skin rash is a “manifestation of COVID.” “Certainly every year, a few times a year we do see a rise in certain viruses that cause pimples or other rashes and fever. We often call that hand, foot and mouth disease. But I've been finding recently the last few weeks that a lot of these kids or family members also have confirmed diagnoses of COVID-19,” she said.
The World Health Organization does list a new skin rash as one of the symptoms of COVID-19, however it is not one of the more common symptoms identified by Health Canada. Kulik said that her concern is that parents will assume that a child who develops a new skin rash has a relatively common viral infection, like Hand Foot and Mouth Disease, and allow them to go back to school or daycare as soon as their symptoms subside.“Recently I have been asking my families, the kids that have hand foot and mouth, to swab also for COVID.