Pediatrician: All Kids With Cold Or Flu Symptoms Should Get Tested For COVID-19
BOSTON (CBS) - As kids return to the classroom, local pediatricians say they are fielding more calls from parents concerned about what to do if their children get sick.
"When they started to go back to daycare we started to get a few more calls and it's just kind of ramping up slowly," said Dr. Mark Blumenthal at Pediatric Associates of Wellesley.
Blumenthal says, no matter how mild symptoms are, any child that needs to return to daycare or school should get tested for COVID-19.
"The truth is that basically everyone that's sick right now is getting a test," Blumenthal said.
Chief of Pediatrics at Tufts Medical Center, Dr. Shirley Huang, says that means a lot of testing will done throughout the fall and winter.
"We won't be able to test everybody who comes to and calls our clinic, quite honestly," Huang said. "Some we will send to our testing site. Some we will recommend a local testing center that's closer to home."
Blumenthal hopes that more convenient testing options such as oral testing or at home test kits will be available sooner rather than later.
"Is this sustainable? The answer is it has to be. A year ago, if you told me we'd be in this situation I'd say, we can't do that. But, you do what you have to do," Blumenthal said.
