Kawasaki disease kills Nine-year-old boy in France.

A nine-year-old boy from Marseille is reported to have died of Kawasaki disease, the mysterious inflammatory syndrome linked to coronavirus.

The boy is believed to be the first victim of the disease in France and only the second in Europe after a teenager died of the syndrome in London last week.

Doctors treating the French boy said he had developed a form of coronavirus but had no symptoms. He was admitted to hospital on 2 May with what medics initially thought was scarlet fever. After being treated for that he was allowed to return home as doctors said his symptoms were mild.

The boy was rushed to La Timone hospital later the same day and admitted to intensive care where he was diagnosed with “signs of Kawasaki disease”. He died six days later on 8 May after having a heart attack that caused brain damage.

French officials said the child’s death had not been formally linked to Kawasaki disease but that it was considered the most likely cause.

Fabrice Michel, the head of the children’s emergency ward at the hospital in Marseille where the child was first admitted, told Agence France-Presse that blood tests showed the boy had been in contact with coronavirus but had no symptoms.

“When admitted he had the clinical signs comparable to scarlet fever. He was seen by an experienced senior paediatrician, and a treatment corresponding to the clinical signs was prescribed,” Michel said. The child was then sent home because he showed “no sign of being seriously ill”.

When the child was taken by ambulance to La Timone hospital doctors realised “reasonably quickly” that it was not scarlet fever.

“The child was showing symptoms that could be signs of Kawasaki disease,” Michel said.

There are believed to be 144 diagnosed cases of Kawasaki disease in France, most of them in the Paris area, more than half of whom have tested positive for Covid-19.

The French public health authority, Santé Publique France, said research suggested the syndrome appeared on average around four weeks after the children were infected by Covid-19, and was possibly a reaction to the virus.