The Pandemic and Antibodies

The story of one child's recovery from PIMS-TS, the rare new condition that caught doctors by surprise in April. James Gallagher visits specialists at the Evelina London Children's Hospital to hear how they coped with identifying and treating a condition they'd never seen before. Dr Jenni Handforth and Dr Sara Hanna explain how 'they had to reinvent and tweak the rule book' to manage PIMS-TS, where 'the immune system has gone a bit crazy' and treatments worked 'like a fire blanket to dampen down the immune system'. And scientists at the Francis Crick Institute have discovered that children can have Coronavirus-fighting antibodies from before the pandemic started. Dr George Kassiotis explains how kids could have them and what this might mean. And Dr Margaret McCartney unpicks the tricky issue of spotting Covid and cold symptoms in children.