Illinois toddler with severe COVID-19 home from hospital

Adrian James, 2, who tested positive for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), breathes with the help of a ventilator at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S., October 5, 2021. REUTERS FILE PHOTO

Adrian James, an Illinois toddler who just days ago was attached to a ventilator at a hospital as he fought a severe case of COVID-19, is home, his mother said Tuesday.

“So, so, so happy,” Tiffany Jackson said in a text message, sharing photos of Adrian sitting up in bed and eating fries after more than a week of breathing and eating via tubes.

Adrian, who will be three years old next month, was airlifted on Oct. 1 to Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, about 80 miles from his family’s hometown of Mount Vernon, Illinois.

Vaccines to prevent COVID-19 are not yet approved in the United States for children under the age of 12.

Jackson urges those who can be vaccinated to do so to protect others, along with wearing masks and physical distancing.

She said her doctor did not recommend the vaccine for her because of an earlier autoimmune response that her doctors said was related to a flu vaccine. Adrian’s father has had one of two vaccine doses and plans to get the second.

Adrian is one of more than 860,000 children under the age of four to contract COVID-19 in the United States since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). There have been more than 20,000 cases involving children under four since Adrian fell ill, CDC data show.

Still, less than 1% of children with reported cases of COVID-19 are hospitalized, and children account for 2.5% of all COVID-19 related hospitalizations, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.