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Is not easy. But it is possible to distinguish the flu from Covid 19 in a child, because between the two diseases there are subtle differences that do not escape doctors.
by Agnese Codignola
Is not easy. But it is possible to distinguish the flu from Covid 19 in a child, because there are subtle differences between the two diseases that do not escape doctors.
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Is not easy. But it is possible to distinguish an influenza from a Covid 19 in a child, because between the two diseases there are subtle differences that do not escape doctors. They were recently highlighted by pediatricians at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, who have just published in JAMA what they have understood by carefully studying 315 children (with a mean age of 8.3 years) who have been diagnosed with Covid between March and May 2020, and up to 1,402 more children (average age 3.9 years) who had influenza type A or B between October 1 (2019) and June 6, 2020. In particular, The analysis concerned the need for hospitalization and treatment, and especially the symptoms.
The difference in symptoms
Regarding the need to keep the little ones in the hospital, or even in intensive care, or to resort to assisted ventilation, there seems to be no difference. But when you go to check the symptoms, it appears that children who get sick from Covid have more evidence: they have fever more often (which rises in three out of four, compared to half of the others), diarrhea or vomiting (which occurs in 26% of them, compared to 12% of the others), pain in muscles and extremities (which affects 22% of those affected by Sars-CoV 2, compared to 7% of those with influenza), than in the chest (11% and 3%, respectively) headache (11% and 9%).
Gastrointestinal indications
Coughing and shortness of breath, on the other hand, seem to affect the two types of patients equally. According to pediatricians at the University of Belfast, the symptoms that are particularly distinctive, in addition to fever, of pediatric Covid are gastrointestinal, and in particular gastrointestinal. diarrhea and vomiting. They saw it in almost 1,000 children and young people between the ages of 2 and 15 (average age 10.5 years) identified in 5 centers across the country between April and July.
As reported in MedRXiv (and therefore in a study still pending review), in half of the children with symptoms (the others were asymptomatic), the most frequent characteristics and most closely related to the presence of specific antibodies were fever, fatigue, gastrointestinal manifestations, and loss of smell and taste. Cough is less present than in adults. The British Health Service (NHS) published its checklist of typical symptoms in children and young people in May, putting fever first, followed by cough (often dry) and loss of smell and taste, but according to the authors it could be revised in a short time, because the cough does not seem to be so characteristic: vomiting and diarrhea would be more so.
Even the US CDC reports a full list of symptoms with fever first, while the European CDC and the Italian Ministry of Health have dedicated pages but do not report comparisons with other respiratory diseases. In all official documents and the most reliable studies, however, fever comes first: this is why it is considered so important to measure it constantly.
