WHO: Probing link between virus and kid's syndrome

The World Health Organization on Wednesday confirmed it was investigating a rare inflammatory condition found in children possibly linked to the new coronavirus.

The condition, thought to be similar to Kawasaki's disease or toxic shock syndrome, has been identified in the U.K, and doctors in Britain, Italy and Spain have been warned to look out for it by Britain’s Paediatric Intensive Care Society.

At the WHO's news conference on Wednesday, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove said: "There are some recent rare descriptions of children in some European countries that have had this inflammatory syndrome, which is similar, similar to the Kawasaki's syndrome. But it seems to be very rare."

She added: "What we've asked for is for the global network of clinicians to be on alert for this and to ensure that they capture information on children systematically so that we could better understand what is occurring in children and so that we could better improve our understanding and guide treatment."

During the news conference the WHO also confirmed it would be scaling up new virus testing provisions for its 140 priority countries, including all countries in sub-Saharan Africa, in an effort to tackle the spread of the pandemic.

Dr Michael Ryan said there would be "there will be a huge scale up in terms of automated tests, manual tests, swabs and media and all of the other material needed for testing right across low, middle-income countries" and that the WHO "will be procuring and shipping over five million manual test kits for those countries.

The organization also commented on Sweden's approach to tackling the new coronavirus.

Sweden's government has taken a different approach to tackling the pandemic in its country, with no lockdown restrictions.

Dr Ryan said: "I think there's a perception out there that Sweden has not put in place control measures and has just allowed the disease to spread. Nothing could be further from the truth."

"Sweden has put in place a very strong public health policy around physical distancing, around caring and protecting for people in long-term facilities and many other things", he said.

"They've been doing the testing. They've ramped up their capacity to do intensive care quite significantly and their health system has always remained within its capacity to respond to the number of cases that they've been experiencing," he added.