10-year-old in Spain heads home after 11 days in COVID-19 ICU

A 10 year-old-boy who has spent 11 days fighting COVID-19 in an intensive care ward in Spain has been given the all clear.

The young boy, Mateo, spent a total of 18 days in the Mancha Centro hospital in Ciudad Real and his departure prompted an outpouring of affection from all the staff who attended him.

Lucas Salcedo, head of paediatric services at Mancha Centro, congratulated him and his family for ‘never throwing in the towel, even in the most painful moments’.

Mateo’s case became well known in Spain after a nurse published a photo of the two of them on social media.

According to Dr. Ana Muñoz, from the Paediatrics Department of the Mancha Centro Hospital, experiences such as Mateo’s ‘should serve to remind us that children and adolescents are susceptible to infection and that, in some cases, they can also present complications’.

Data disclosed by the Mancha Centro Hospital, reveals that more than 833 patients under 14 years of age have been diagnosed with coronavirus at the hospital since March of last year.

Of these, 16 required hospital care and three had to be admitted to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) of the Hospital.

Muñoz said, however, that according to the data available to date, minors with COVID-19 have a better prognosis than infected adults.

The most common symptoms among the children admitted as a result of COVID-19 at the Mancha Centro Hospital, were shortness of breath, cough, fever, nausea or vomiting, with fundamentally mild characteristics.

Those who went on to develop Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), which is when some organs and tissues — such as the heart, lungs, blood vessels, kidneys, digestive system, brain, skin or eyes — become severely inflamed, were the ones admitted into the hospital’s Paediatric Intensive Care Unit.

According to Muñoz, although pre-existing pathologies are more likely to progress to severe COVID-19 disease requiring intensive care unit (ICU) admission, none of the children admitted to the hospital or to the hospital’s PICU had any associated illnesses.