Most children and teenagers with Covid-19 in China ‘experienced mild symptoms’

A majority of the children and teenagers in China who were infected with Covid-19 and were admitted to hospital experienced only mild symptoms, preliminary analysis suggests.

The findings are based on the first ever systematic review of 18 studies involving 1,065 participants.

Most of the patients were reported to have mild respiratory symptoms, such as fever, dry cough, and fatigue, or were asymptomatic, the researchers said.

However, the analysis also found that some children become severely ill, including a 13-month-old infant.

The infant showed symptoms of pneumonia, complicated by shock and kidney failure, but was successfully treated with intensive care, the team said.

A 30-hour-old newborn was also found to have developed breathing problems after acquiring the infection from the mother.

The review was conducted by researchers in Italy and published in the journal Jama Pediatrics.

Of the 1,065 participants, 444 were younger than 10 years while 553 were aged 10 to 19 years.

Mild symptoms included fever, fatigue, and dry cough, accompanied by other upper respiratory symptoms including nasal congestion and runny nose while rarer symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, and diarrhoea were also observed in a few of the cases.

The researchers noted most children with Covid-19 generally required supportive care only, although they were unable to determine what type of therapeutic care was provided.

Some patients with mild respiratory symptoms, pneumonia, and fever were treated with antibiotics and supportive care, they said.

The authors wrote in their paper: “In general, paediatric patients with Covid-19 had a good prognosis and recovered within one to two weeks after disease onset, and cases of paediatric death from Covid-19 were not reported in the age range of zero to nine years.

“One death was reported in the age range of 10 to 19 years, but no more information was provided about this patient.”

However, they added that data was still lacking from other countries like the US or European nations where there are a high number of Covid-19 cases.

Commenting on the research Dr Susan Tansey, fellow of the faculty of pharmaceutical medicine, who was not involved in the review, said the analysis only included studies published up to March 3 and does not include more recent research.

She said: “While the data confirms that symptomatic infection with Covid-19 does occur in children it does not give us an indication of the proportion of symptomatic versus asymptomatic infection or indeed rates of infection in children.”

She also added the research doesn’t indicate whether the children had any underlying health issues, particularly for the severe case reported of a 13-month-old child.

Dr Tansey continued: “Therefore, my main conclusion is that this systematic review underlines the need for further global well-designed studies to look at the incidence of asymptomatic and symptomatic coronavirus infection in children.”