Nutritional Advice El Mondo
Objectives:
Emerging evidence suggests young children are at greater risk of COVID-19 infection than initially predicted. However, a comprehensive understanding of epidemiology of COVID-19 infection in young children under 5 years, the most at-risk age-group for respiratory infections, remain unclear. Therefore, this review article has been conducted.
What are the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of COVID-19 infection in children under 5 years?
Study design:
This review article included 65 articles with a total of 1,214 children younger than 5 years with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection.
Results and conclusions:
The investigators found pooled estimates showed that 50% young COVID-19 cases were infants [95% CI = 36% to 63%, 27 studies], 53% were male [95% CI = 41% to 65%, 24 studies], 43% were asymptomatic [95% CI = 15% to 73%, 9 studies] and 7% [95% CI = 0% to 30%, 5 studies] had severe disease that required intensive-care-unit admission.
The investigators found of 139 newborns from COVID-19 infected mothers, 5 (3.6%) were COVID-19 positive. There was only one death recorded.
The investigators concluded nearly half of young COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic and half are infants, highlighting the need for ongoing surveillance to better understand the epidemiology, clinical pattern and transmission of COVID-19 to develop effective preventive strategies against COVID-19 disease in young paediatric population.
Original title:
Epidemiology of COVID-19 infection in young children under five years: A systematic review and meta-analysis by Bhuiyan MU, Stiboy E, […], Homaira N.
Link:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33342635/
Additional information of El Mondo:
Find more information/studies on coronavirus right here.