COVID-19 Risk of Severe Illness in Children Higher than Other Viruses: Study

According to a new study led by Canada that builds on previous research examining how the SARS-CoV-2 virus affects children, a small but not insignificant number of children who seek emergency care and are diagnosed with COVID-19 infection.

The study, published on Tuesday in the peer-reviewed JAMA Network Open, found that among 3,221 young people enrolled in the study who tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus in an emergency department, 3.3% had serious results within 14 days, while 22.8% were hospitalized. A total of 10,382 participants were enrolled in the study.

“It is important to note that children sick enough to be hospitalized and with COVID are more likely to have a serious outcome than children sick enough to be hospitalized with other types of similar illnesses,” such as the flu , bronchiolitis or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), co-author Dr Stephen Freedman, professor in the departments of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary, told CTVNews. ca during a telephone interview.

The results of the study, which recruited participants under the age of 18 between March 2020 and June 2021, are based on cases prior to the Delta and Omicron waves, and should not be taken as a reflection of the current situation, Freedman said.

Freedman pointed out that the study only reflected those who sought emergency care at one of the 41 study sites and did not reflect the general rate in the community. “They are intended to provide an estimate of this risk among a pediatric emergency department screened population,” the document said. The study did not include children who were positive, but were not tested, for example. The recruitment included patients from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Italy, New Zealand, Paraguay, Singapore, Spain and the United States.

The results also suggest that older children in the study were at increased risk of serious complications, and younger children, especially very young, were at lower risk. Children with significant underlying comorbidities were also at higher risk.

Serious outcomes were defined in the study as patients developing complications including heart attack or heart failure, stroke, septic shock, encephalitis, respiratory failure and death, or if major interventions such as chest drainage and extracorporeal oxygenation (ECMO) were performed.

“We also found that the duration of illness when they received care was associated with serious outcomes, with one window being that children who had already had symptoms for four to seven days were at increased risk compared to others. durations that we’ve seen, both shorter or longer, ”Freedman said.

The researchers also found that geography also had an impact on the results; the odds of having a serious outcome were much lower in Canada than in the American comparison group, for example. This could be attributed in part to the fact that there were broader and more accessible tests in Canada, compared to the United States.

“We were capturing a larger base… whereas in other countries, especially the US early on, in particular… they were more restricted in their testing,” Freedman explained.

There are other retrospective studies that suggest similar results using database methodology; What makes this study special is that it prospectively recruited patients from 41 emergency departments located in 10 countries in a cohort study and did not rely on databases. This allowed researchers to gather more detail at the patient level, with recruitment taking place before noticeable results were documented.

“The point in our study is that it does happen and that the risk to hospitalized children is actually significant, and we’ve seen that with data from the Public Health Agency of Canada,” Freeman said, pointing out importance of vaccination in reducing the risk of serious consequences.

“At the end of the day, some children are hospitalized, so it’s not a trivial illness.”