The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control studied 10 European Union member countries and evaluated the outcome of COVID-19 in children 0-17 years old.
Their findings published in Eurosurveillance included 820,404 symptomatic pediatric cases and showed the following results:
- 1.2% were hospitalized
- 0.08% required intensive care
- 0.01% died.
Those findings are similar to previous studies that showed low mortality rates among children. You can find those researches Children 5-11 Years Old have Mild COVID-19.
Hospitalization and comorbidities
83.7% of hospitalized children had no reported comorbidity, while16.3% had comorbidities. They are:
- Cancer (20.7%),
- Diabetes (18.2%),
- Cardiac (15.9%)
- Lung (11.8%) disease.
Intensive Care Unit Admission
Most of the children admitted to the ICU had no comorbidities, but 34 out of 136 cases had one more comorbidity.
The most common are cancer, HIV, lung disease, cardiac disease, and diabetes.
14 out of 36 fatal cases had at least one comorbidity.
Summary
In this study, most children with symptomatic COVID-19 have minimal risk of death or hospitalization. For every 10,000 symptomatic pediatric cases reported, approximately 117 were hospitalized, and eight required ICU admission or respiratory support.
Take Away Message
The immune system of the vast majority of children can handle a COVID-19 infection. That is why most of them have mild COVID.
Asymptomatic or mild symptomatic COVID-19 elicits effective and long-lasting antibody responses in children and adolescents that can last for years.
If they have comorbidities, talk to their pediatricians about what can be done to lower their risk. Make sure you read, Adverse Reactions to Pfizer Biontech Vaccine for the 5-11 Years Old if you consider vaccination.
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Reference:
Bundle, Nick et al. “COVID-19 trends and severity among symptomatic children aged 0-17 years in 10 European Union countries, 3 August 2020 to 3 October 2021.” Euro surveillance : bulletin Europeen sur les maladies transmissibles = European communicable disease bulletin vol. 26,50 (2021): 2101098. doi:10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2021.26.50.2101098
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