European study Covid in children

[Kirschcherry]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53181525

Deaths are very rare but 1 in 10 needed intensive care.
More than half were admitted to hospital. This is much more than I would have thought.

Look at the context though: "Researchers led by a team at London's Great Ormond Street looked at 582 children aged from three days up to 18 years living in 25 European countries. They all tested positive for Covid-19 during the initial peak of the pandemic in April and had been seen at one of 82 specialist healthcare centres for their symptoms."

The study is only of 600 kids who were treated at specialist healthcare centres. All the kids who never even got tests, because testing wasn't widely available at the time, or who were just fine at home with no symptoms at all, weren't included in the study. The asymptomatic portion of kids were only tested as they were close contacts of other positive cases and they were waking around with it fine without knowing about it.

"The researchers say the death rate in children is likely to be "substantially lower" than that observed in the study, because those with mild symptoms would not have been tested or diagnosed at the time."

Yes, I did see that. The death rate does not concern me. I was just surprised by the level of hospitalisation and need for intensive care even taking into account the points that you made. Obviously the vast majority of children who catch this will be just fine but in this study of children displaying enough symptoms to warrant a test 1 in 10 required intensive care and that still seems like quite a lot.

I think the concern will be that they get more ill if they have other infections at the same time. (This was also true of other coronavirus NL 63too)
Which i guess is likely at schools and more likely with younger children.
16% asymptomatic is a lot though in terms of spreading it.

It's not 1 in 10 cases. It's one in 10 who were already ill enough to qualify for a test and be under specialist medical care.

Given how difficult it was to get a test - especially for children - this really isn't alarming. These were clearly the sickest of the sick already.

It's a form of selection bias.

If you look at the number of children in HDU and the mortality rate in children, it's clear that the risk to children is vanishingly low.

These are tiny numbers of children. The only people who could get a test in the early weeks and months were those seriously unwell enough to be admitted to hospital. There will also be another sub section of patients who were not unwell enough to be treated in ‘specialist’ centres. Very very few children got seriously unwell with this and a tiny proportion died. For comparison there are thousands of children admitted to English hospital each year just with RSV bronchiolitis.

It was around 6/10 hospitalised & 8% into ICU. 75% had no underlying conditions. I was also surprised at high hospitalisation rate - clearly skewed to some degree by size of sample & testing criteria in some of the countries (ie the U.K. ) definitely needs bigger study.
People on Mumsnet keep telling me that flu is a much more serious illness for children but I just looked it up, just 0.19% of kids hospitalised with flu in England & 12 very sadly died (that’s from a 2014 study) On the basis of this study, Covid definitely more serious. But, as I said, the study is limited by size & testing criteria.

My dd was quite poorly with corona toes, I called the gp for advice, they didn't want to know, didn't even ask her name so it wasn't registered.
So if this is common practice there will be lots of children not even used in this study.
We were told we could take her for a test if we wanted, she declined and she's 16. There is no way it could have been chilblains as it was during the last heat wave.

Covid is a nasty nasty illness. People completely under estimate it. Yes for most it's mild but there are thousands of mild cases where people are still ill 3 and 4 months later. It is completely different to the flu and should not be compared.

Over 30,000 children in the UK are hospitalised with RSV every year, mostly under the age of 5.
6% of them need ICU.

My baby was one if the ones hospitalised with rsv. The wards were rammed this winter with babies with RSV. I also think she had covid. The threshold for admission was really high so I suspect the children in the study were at the very highest rate of being poorly. She was sick enough to trigger the ooo to say she needed to be seen in A&E but at A&E they got her in and out within 30 minutes. They didn’t want children in unless they were very poorly indeed.

Oh and just to add, despite being in A&E with a fever of 40 and dodgy breathing, she wasn’t tested at that point. I suspect the children who were actually tested were again a subset.

My son was in hospital with rsv when he was 9 weeks old, on oxygen for a week. People do not realise how serious it is for small children and it is caused by the common cold.
I am glad your little one is okay @Sailingblue

Jrobhatch29 That must have been horrid at 9 weeks. I avoided bronchiolitis with my first so was a bit oblivious to RSV until my second got it. It will be interesting to see what happens this winter.

It also said only Four of the 582 children studied died, two of whom had known underlying health conditions.

A quarter had underlying health conditions.

Of the four deaths during the study (0.69%), none were in children under 10, and two of those who died had pre-existing health conditions.

There's no information about all the kids who had c19 mildly.

(or even asymptomatic) Study only tells you what happened to those who felt bad enough to turn up at hospital & were admitted. We know nothing about all the other kids who had it. Probably a very large number.

I don't think RSV is usually considered a cold virus(?)

lljkk Yes exactly. I think my baby was as poorly with (what I think) was Covid as she was with bronchiolitis but didn’t see a ward, wouldn’t have been recorded as Covid etc. If she’d have had the same symptoms out of the pandemic, I think she’d have been admitted to the ward for monitoring. So, I think it’s safe to assume the sample is not representative of all children that have had it.

This is a perfect example of people without the skills trying to read a scientific paper and completely misunderstanding what it’s telling them.

The children included in this study are self selecting - the very sickest at a time when few were even tested (and a large proportion had serious underlying conditions) and even then a very small amount died.

Op - this study really isn’t proving what you think it is.

I read the other day that between 20 and 30 percent of those admitted to hospital may have irreversible lung scarring which can cause multiple problems long term. The thread on here with those suffering months on after getting the virus is worrying. I'd like to hear more about the long term effects of the younger generations rather than an 'it's OK younger people are very unlikely to die, we need to get back to normal now, you let your kids ride in a car'

The children I have met who have had it, didn’t have hardly any symptoms and no underlying health issues 2 months later. There have been about 100 children admitted to hospital in the UK so a very small number I would think would have underlying health issues.

I get the impression that permanent injury to the lungs is a risk with other respiratory infections that cause pneumonia. Is covid actually worse for causing lung injury, when adjusted by age or underlying base conditions than all the other things that can cause pneumonia?

I agree. And as this has only been around 3 months people saying "permanent" really cannot prove it will be permanent.