CHICAGO _ The ongoing investigation into the death of a 9-month-old baby has raised questions as to whether COVID-19 was to blame, Dr. Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said in a media briefing Saturday.
The baby's death last month jarred city and state officials who noted when they announced it that the coronavirus has generally had little impact on children. During her regular morning online question-and-answer session Saturday morning, Arwady cautioned that the investigation remains ongoing nearly a month after the baby died and noted the Cook County medical examiner's office ultimately will rule on a cause.
She said, however, that, "We did not find caregivers who had COVID-19 ... where we did testing, that was negative. The baby wasn't known to have exposure."
She added that "there were other positive tests for another kind of coronavirus." She identified that disease as NL63, a coronavirus that emerged well before COVID-19 spread across the globe.
Arwady said examination under a microscope didn't show "signs that any of the COVID-19 had actually gotten into the cells of the baby."
"We didn't see the lung inflammation or the signs of infection or lung injury that would suggest that even if COVID-19 were there, that it was a cause of death," she said.
Medical examiner's office spokeswoman Natalia Derevyanny confirmed that the investigation is ongoing and said tissue samples had been sent to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
