A 5-year-old Michigan girl died from the coronavirus, but deaths in young children from the disease are still rare

• Skylar Herbert, a 5-year-old girl from Detroit, Michigan, died on Sunday from complications related to the coronavirus.
• After testing positive for the disease, Skylar developed a rare form of meningitis and brain swelling, according to The Detroit News.
• Deaths in children from the coronavirus remain rare.
• Children represent 2% of coronavirus cases in the US, and children tend to develop milder symptoms, compared to adults.
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A 5-year-old girl from Detroit, Michigan died from the coronavirus on Sunday after developing rare complications and spending two weeks on a ventilator, according to multiple reports.

Skylar Herbert, the daughter of two first responders, complained of a bad headache in early March, according to the Detroit News. When Skylar was admitted to Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, she tested positive for meningitis and COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to The Detroit News.

She then developed meningoencephalitis, a rare complication of the coronavirus, which causes swelling of brain tissue.

When doctors told Skylar's parents that their daughter was likely brain dead, they decided to remove her from the ventilator.

"We basically just knew she wasn't coming back to us," LaVondria Herbert, Skylar's mother, told The Detroit News on Sunday.

Relatively few children have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and cases are usually mild

In the US, children represent just 2% of coronavirus cases, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Children who contract the disease tend to develop milder symptoms than adults do.

Because many pediatric patients are asymptomatic, their cases are also more difficult to diagnose.

Earlier this month, the CDC reported that three people younger than 18 had died of the coronavirus, and there were 2,572 people reported cases in that age group.