Pediatricians described the findings as reassuring, as children accounted for less than 1% of coronavirus cases in England, Wales and Scotland; and only 1% of those children died, the researchers report.
The researchers – from various UK institutions – analyzed data on 651 Covid-19 patients under the age of 19 who were admitted to hospitals in England, Scotland and Wales between January and July. These young patients at the time accounted for 0.9% of all patients in those hospitals, the researchers found.
Six of those young patients – as many as 1% – died in hospital. In comparison, 27% of Covid-19 patients of all ages died over the same time period, the researchers found in their study, published in the British medical journal BMJ on Thursday.
Overall, 18% of young patients needed critical care and “Black ethnicity was significantly associated with access to critical care,” the researchers found.
The most common symptoms that the young patients had were fever, cough, nausea or vomiting, and shortness of breath. The researchers found that 52 patients – as many as 11% – met the criteria for multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, such as MIS-C, a troublesome complication of Covid-19 in which different body parts can be disrupted.
Children who may have had MIS-C were significantly older than those who were not and significantly more likely to have non-White ethnicity, the researchers found. Children with MIS-C were also five times more likely than others to have access to critical care.
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“This is an observational study of hospital children. The limitations include that not all cases have been caught. This also does not account for the true prevalence of significant COVID-19 infection in children,” Athimalaipet Ramanan, honorary professor of pediatric rheumatology at the University of Bristol , said in a written statement circulated by the UK-based Science Media Center on Thursday.
“However, on balance, it is an important study because it probably would have provided most children with a significant illness to the hospitals,” said Ramanan, who was not involved in the new study.
Dr. Liz Whittaker, an infectious disease leader at the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health in Britain, who was not involved in the study, called the findings “reassuring”.
“Very low numbers of children have been admitted to critical care and the researchers reported a very low mortality rate – especially compared to adults,” Whittaker said in another written statement released by the Science Media Center. “In general, parents and pediatricians should be reassured by the findings of this paper.”
It was unclear which patients were admitted directly to the hospital for coronavirus infection and who were admitted for other reasons, but happened to test positive for the virus. More research is also needed to determine whether similar findings occur among young patients in other parts of the world.
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