• Almost 100 children in 6 countries have been reported infected with a rare condition that doctors suspect could have a connection to the coronavirus, according to The Guardian. 
• Symptoms are a combination of toxic shock and an inflammatory syndrome similar to Kawasaki disease, a condition that affects arteries to the heart, Reuters reported.
• There is no confirmation that the syndrome is connected to the coronavirus. It is still exceedingly rare.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday it had put its clinical network on alert after UK health officials noted cases.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Around 100 children in 6 countries have been reported as having a rare complication that doctors fear could be related to coronavirus, The Guardian reported. 

The World Health Organization has put its clinical network on alert since UK health officials first warned of the cases on Tuesday. 

The cases combine toxic shock and symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease, a rare syndrome that causes inflammation of the arteries to the heart, Reuters reported. The cases also have “blood parameters consistent with severe COVID-19 in children,” said the UK alert. 

There has been no confirmation of any connection to the coronavirus, but the alert spoke of a “growing concern” of the possibility.

Doctors across Europe are seeing a spike in cases, according to Italy’s Il Corriere Della Sera newspaper. Patients have been reported in the UK, the US, France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, The Guardian said.

Business Insider was able to verify more than 70 of these through local reports. 

World Health Organisation (WHO)’s Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead on the Health Emergencies Program, said in a press briefing on Wednesday that the WHO’s clinical network has met to discuss the issue and has put clinicians “on alert” for cases.

She also emphasized that the syndrome is “very rare.” 

At Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo, Italy, 20 children are being treated for the syndrome. Pediatrician rheumatologist Dr Lucio Verdoni told Il Corriere Della Sera that they were seeing as many cases in one month than the hospital would normally see in three years. 

In New York, three cases that appear similar to those reported in Europe are being treated, two of which are serious, Reuters said. In an earlier case in California, a 6-month-old baby tested positive for coronavirus after being admitted with the new syndrome. 

Dr Mark Gorelick at Columbia University Medical Center in New York told Reuters that he does not believe the children have Kawasaki disease, but are experiencing a very similar immune response to an earlier infection of some kind. 

It is possible, he said, that an earlier infection is having a delayed effect. “It seems a week to two weeks later, you may have the immune system responding in a very disorganized way,” he told Reuters.

Pediatrician Dr Marianna Fabi, who is treating five cases at Bologna’s Sant’Orsola-Malpighi hospital, told Il Corriere Della Sera: “Kawasaki syndrome does not have a precise cause, but in genetically predisposed children there is a triggering environmental factor, probably infectious and probably viral.”

A 3-year-old was discharged from the hospital on Thursday after a month of care, the newspaper reported.

Kawasaki disease, which is rare, normally affects children up to the age of 8. It is named after Tomisaku Kawaski, the doctor who first described the condition in the 1960s, according to The Japan Times.