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A recent report published in The Lancet says infants and young children are at high risk for admission to hospital if they develop respiratory tract infection from certain viruses including influenza virus. The reason for this could be the immaturity of their respiratory tract and immune system, which would make it difficult for such patients to fight infection. But what has perplexed clinicians, epidemiologists and scientists in the case of COVID-19 is the absence of pediatric patients infected with the disease, due to which there is an absence of case definitions and management strategies for dealing with such patients.
In a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, researchers studied 36 pediatric patients (1-16 years) with COVID-19, who accounted for five per cent of the patients in Zheijang province of China. The study found that none of the children developed a severe illness or died due to COVID-19, which is similar to findings of SARS-CoV pediatric patients in 2002-03.
Further, the most common clinical finding among these 36 patients was that of pneumonia (19 cases), fever, dry cough or both. These cases were identified either because an adult family member had the infection or they had been exposed to the epidemic area.
Significantly, the data gathered during the study points out that pediatric patients with COVID-19 developed mild or asymptomatic disease, which was accompanied by pneumonia in over half of the cases. The analysis of the study also published in The Lancet says the following, “Together, these results could suggest that children have specific mechanisms regulating the interaction between the immune system and respiratory machinery, which could be contributing to milder disease.”
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It also states that the most important finding to come out from this study is that while children may not develop serious illness from the coronavirus, they are still carriers of the virus and have the capability of transmitting the disease to others.
“If children are important in viral transmission and amplification, social and public health policies (eg, avoiding interaction with elderly people) could be established to slow transmission and protect vulnerable populations. There is an urgent need for further investigation of the role children have in the chain of transmission,” the analysis suggests.
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