The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is investigating the potential reasons for the spike in rare brain infections and abscesses in children. Cases of brain abscesses in children reportedly tripled last year in southern Nevada, and the CDC isn’t sure If COVID restriction could be to blame.
Children are experiencing a debilitated immune function in the aftermath of the draconian COVID-19 scamdemic policies. Face masks and lockdowns have proved to be devastating to the immune system, but the CDC contends that they are not sure that that’s what causing rare brain infections in children in Nevada.
Dr. Taryn Bragg, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada, reported the unexpected number of cases to the Southern Nevada Health District, which issued a public health advisory in January 2023. “We started noticing the infections in March 2022,” Dr. Bragg told “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Sunday morning. “The vast majority of children presented with sinus infections that fairly rapidly progressed to abscesses forming in the brain.”
A majority of the kids also showed the presence of the bacteria Streptococcus intermedius, which is commonly found in the oral and respiratory cavity, she said. “It often doesn’t result in infections, but it certainly can — and it’s the most common organism that will result in brain abscesses,” Dr. Bragg said.
She is ruling out “environmental factors” in these outbreaks. “We didn’t find anything local to our community that would help us mitigate and try to reduce infection rates,” she told Fox News Digital in a phone interview. These infections are not like COVID or getting a cold either. Most children who come into the hospital are already very sick, she said.
“It’s very different from your common cold,” she said. “Most of the children had significant fevers, severe headaches, lethargy, perhaps even neurologic deficits, like speech or language difficulties or weakness.” So far, she said no children have died of these brain infections and abscesses. The vast majority of the children have “fully recovered without neurologic deficit,” Dr. Bragg said
Between 2015 and 2021, Clark County in southern Nevada only saw about five cases per year among those age 18 and younger, the Southern Nevada Health District stated.
In 2022, there were 17 cases, an increase of 240%. -Fox News
The CDC noted that last year, they knew of three cases of the Streptococcus intermedius bacteria causing abscesses in children’s brains. They also noted that this infection was not concerning:
In May 2022, CDC was notified of three children at a hospital in California with intracranial infections caused by Streptococcus intermedius. All the children were previously healthy and ranged in age from 11 to 13 years old at the time of hospitalization. Based on the cases from California and information gathered from additional health systems, investigators were concerned that there may be an increase in pediatric intracranial infections. However, an analysis of hospitalizations and data received from a wide range of children’s hospitals and providers across the United States did not find a concerning increase in pediatric intracranial infections. –CDC.gov website
Of course, the fault is COVID-19, not the fact that children have no immune system left. “Discussions with clinicians in multiple states raised concerns about a possible increase in pediatric intracranial infections, particularly those caused by Streptococcus intermedius, during the past year and the possible contributing role of SARS-CoV-2 infection,” the CDC stated in a report, according to Fox News.
Until more information is received from other states across the country, Dr. Bragg said it will be difficult to make any “definitive determination” as to what is causing the infections. “Despite the three- or fourfold increase in numbers, it’s still a relatively small sample size,” she noted.