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Coronavirus Hong Kong
Hong KongHealth & Environment

Coroner to investigate death of 11-month old girl, Hong Kong’s youngest fatality linked to Covid-19

  • Baby, who had ‘good past health’, was in a stable condition until early Saturday, when she developed fever and started to suffer from convulsions
  • Paediatricians note that infants lack immunity to human coronavirus and list warning signs for parents

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The baby girl died at Hong Kong’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Photo: Dickson Lee
Gigi ChoyandJack Tsang
An 11-month old girl has died after contracting the coronavirus, becoming Hong Kong’s youngest pandemic-related victim and the third such death of young ­children in the past fortnight.
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Health authorities said the baby, who had “good past health”, was in a stable condition until 4am on Saturday, when she developed a fever and started to suffer from convulsions. She was brought to the accident and emergency department of Tseung Kwan O Hospital, intubated and then transferred to the intensive care unit at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Yau Ma Tei.

She was given the antiviral drug Remdesivir, but her condition worsened rapidly and she suffered cardiac arrest at noon on Saturday. The baby died on Sunday night.

“The case was referred to the coroner for further investigation, as the patient was just admitted for one to two days,” said Dr Lau Ka-hin, a chief manager at the Hospital Authority. “We cannot identify the cause of death at this moment. We will discuss with the parents as well as pathologists how to carry out the coroner examination.”

He added that the baby’s twin sister, eight-year-old brother, parents and grandparents had also tested positive for the virus.

Professor Lau Yu-lung, a paediatrician and member of the government’s Advisory Panel on Covid-19 Vaccines and Scientific Committee on Vaccine Preventable Diseases, said young children had not been exposed to other types of common human coronavirus, which also caused flu-like symptoms, in the past, and therefore had not built up much immunity.
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