Toronto pediatrician concerned some COVID-19 cases being mistook for hand, foot and mouth disease

A Toronto pediatrician says that she is seeing a rising number of COVID-19 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.

Dr. Dina Kulik made the comment during an interview with CP24 on Tuesday afternoon.

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 challenge is if these kids are going back to daycare thinking they have another diagnosis, they may not be isolating for the full amount of time that we want them to, if it's also COVID.”

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.

That, in turn, could lead to them exposing others to COVID-19 if they are carrying the virus.

“Recently I have been asking my families, the kids that have hand foot and mouth, to swab also for COVID. A lot of them weren’t swabbing because they thought they had this other diagnosis, I can’t possibly have COVID and this other virus but it has turned out, at least with my patients, that all of them actually have confirmed COVID,” she said. “So I just want to make sure that parents know that it (the rash) could be COVID and even if they have this other diagnosis, they should swab their child.”