WESTERVILLE, Ohio — Parents are already having to deal with a lot this past year with a pandemic still happening.
Aside from COVID-19 concerns, though, pediatricians are also seeing more kids with the hand foot and mouth virus.
Parents like Addison Shafer in Westerville are dealing with this right now.
“Sunday is when he started developing the rash and he was very uncomfortable. Spiked a fever again,” she said.
Shafer’s caught the hand foot and mouth virus, later passing it on to her daughter.
Both her children are under six years old, and she said dealing with the virus on top of working from home was a lot to handle for her and her children.”
"He [her son] was really uncomfortable,” she said.
“His whole body was… I've never seen anything like it. He was just covered."
Dr. Christen Johnson, a family physician in Columbus, said hand foot and mouth is easy to catch.
It's a lot like any virus you'd pick up like a cold.
"The difference is the first thing that happens is you get a fever, you don’t feel so good, and then about two days later you start to get these very strange looking blisters," she said.
Doctor Johnson says those happen around and inside the mouth, feet, hands, groin and anal region.
"This is almost like a mix of having the flu and the chickenpox."
It'll run its course in about 10 days, and Doctor Johnson says parents need to make sure their sick kids are hydrated.
However, with COVID-19 cases overloading hospitals and emergency rooms, Doctor Johnson advises parents to use telemedicine for things like hand foot and mouth.
"It's somewhat like a facetime, but it's an easy way for us to be able to see you and not have to have you worry so much about your kid catching something else or your kid potentially giving something to someone else."