A rare coronavirus-linked illness suspected to have killed children overseas is unlikely to have an impact in Australia, says the federal government's top doctor.
Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy says the mystery illness - likened to Kawasaki disease - is extremely rare and unlikely to impact Australia given the low number of children infected with coronavirus.
Dr Murphy on Friday briefed the national cabinet on the illness at the urgent request of Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
"We had a discussion on the very rare condition in children, which you've all heard about from overseas, the paediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome," he told reporters on Friday afternoon.
At least three children have died in the United States after coming down with the illness. Source: The New York Times
"I was able to brief them on the fact that this is extremely rare and probably unlikely to be seen in Australia, given our very, very low number of infections in children. It's still not clear what the association with the virus
is, for this condition, but it is extremely rare."
Kawasaki disease has the closest similarity to the mystery illness called PIMS-TS, which is suspected in the deaths of three US children and has affected dozens more in Europe.
In the United States there have been 73 reported cases of the condition, while it has also been recorded in children in the United Kingdom and in Italy.
Kawasaki disease is a rare inflammatory condition found in children that causes the walls of blood vessels in the body to become inflamed.
The disease was first reported in Japanese paediatricians in 1967 and is usually caused by an overreaction in a child’s immune system to one or more infections.
Doctors in northern Italy, one of the world’s hardest-hit areas during the pandemic, have reported extraordinarily large numbers of children aged under nine with severe cases of what appears to be Kawasaki disease, more common in parts of Asia.
In Britain, doctors have made similar observations, prompting Health Secretary Matt Hancock to say that he was “very worried” and that medical authorities were looking at the issue closely.
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