Alarming pictures show how a five-month-old baby’s feet turned blue and purple as she was diagnosed with a deadly rare Covid-complication.

Madelyn Grant, from Stow, Ohio, was rushed to hospital after her heart became inflamed and raced at double the rate of a healthy child her age.

Her ‘terrified’ parents say they feared she ‘wouldn’t make it’ as doctors took their little girl to the ICU.

The infant had been dropped off at daycare on February 2 after recovering from coronavirus.

She was taken to Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital after staff noticed her mottled hands and feet.

Mum Lauren, 25, who works as a nurse, said: ‘Her hands and feet were blue. I went and picked her up and I noticed that she was having some rapid respirations.’

She added: ‘It was absolutely terrifying. My first instinct as a mother was – what’s going on? And then my second instinct, as a nurse, is she’s not getting enough oxygen.

‘My husband and I were just sitting there sobbing because we didn’t know if she was going to make it or not.’

After conducting tests, doctors said Madelyn’s heart was racing from 200 beats per minute to about 260 – with a baby’s heart normally beating at around 110 to 160.

She was diagnosed with a rare COVID-complication called multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C – a condition where different body parts become inflamed as the body reacts to the previous infection.

The little girl received steroids and an antibody therapy to reduce inflammation and was thankfully out of danger after 24 hours.

She became gradually more like her old self, as medics treated her in hospital for 10 days.

Lauren said: ‘She was smiling again. She was kind of moving a little bit more and it really gave my husband and I some hope.’

The mum has urged parents to monitor their children’s symptoms closely after they recover from Covid.

She said: ‘I feel like we were really lucky because Maddie didn’t have to be put on a ventilator. It’s super important to be able to recognize these symptoms in kids.’

Around 2000 children in the US have been diagnosed with MIS-C and 30 have died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Heather Daniels, DO, an infectious disease specialist with the Clinic, has warned parents to look out for prolonged, unexplained fever, rashes, red eyes, abdominal pain, chest pain, diarrhea or difficulty breathing.

Most children who receive treatment recover but Dr Daniels has cautioned that MIS-C is a new illness and experts are unsure of the long-term impact.

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