While evaluating an adolescent who had endured a several-day history of vomiting and diarrhea, I mentioned the likelihood of a viral causation, including SARS-CoV-2 infection. His well-informed mother responded, “He has no respiratory symptoms. Does COVID cause GI disease?”
Indeed, not only is the gastrointestinal (GI) tract a potential portal of entry of the virus but it may well be the site of mediation of both local and remote injury and thus a harbinger of more severe clinical phenotypes.