Is it true that coronavirus does not pose a danger to children?

Since the emergence of the new coronavirus infection in the human population, it was believed that the most vulnerable group of the population was the elderly, and children suffered the disease easily or completely asymptomatically. We decided to check if this is true today.

At the very beginning of the epidemic, the media wrote: “There are very few children among the sick. We can say that these are isolated cases so far" (February 2020, BBC), “COVID-19 rarely infects children” (March 2020, "News"), “About 80% of children tolerate the new coronavirus infection more easily than adults” (May 2020, TASS), “Children without any concomitant diseases tolerate coronavirus easily: a slight runny nose, low fever, possible skin rash” (June 2020, RT). The idea that the coronavirus is almost not scary for children is firmly rooted in the minds also because, against the background news O repurposing adults hospitals under reception there were very few patients with new coronavirus infection similar information about transfer children's bed capacity for infectious diseases.

It is immediately worth noting that the above publications described the situation regarding the infection of children with the original, so-called Wuhan variant of the virus. The British version, aka "Alpha", was discovered in September 2020, and began to become widespread in late autumn - early winter 2020. It has caused great concern among pediatricians. “The coronavirus strain that came from China during the first wave of the pandemic was not as dangerous for children and adolescents as the currently spreading British strain,” in February 2021 reported Elena Prokopova, chief pediatrician of Slovakia. This opinion is also consistent with conclusions scientists. A group of Israeli researchers calculated that with the advent of Alpha, the number of cases of coronavirus detection in children from 0 to 9 years of age doubled (21,615 cases in August-October 2020 versus 50,811 in December-February 2021). A similar picture is shown by statistics on incidence in the USA. Children's morbidity rates have begun to rise since the beginning of 2021 and have begun to rival the level of the oldest groups of the population.

Thus, in January there was a rise associated with “Alpha”, and in April there was an outbreak due to “Deltas" The September rise cannot yet be explained by the dominance of any variant. However, it can be assumed that the vaccinated population, including mature and elderly people, has become more resistant even to new, more aggressive variants.

As can be seen from the data presented, in September 2021, there were more than two times more sick children (group 0–17) than mature and elderly people (50+). However, in observations Israeli scientists, the number of hospitalizations with the advent of Alpha decreased: 261 (0.98%) in the first period versus 379 (0.52%) in the second. Similar painting observed in the USA - the increase in incidence did not lead to an increase in mortality in the children's age group. Mortality throughout the epidemic continues to remain at a relatively low level, reaching in some periods only one case per 666,000 people.

However, the low mortality rate does not tell us that we can relax when it comes to children, since the disease itself can lead to serious consequences. It was not possible to find comparable statistical data for Russia in open sources, while news about child mortality began to appear in the media from the end of summer. So, according to “Kommersant", "in the Tula region, a two-month-old child died due to COVID-19, in the Volgograd region, a two-year-old girl died, in Yakutia, for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, two cases of severe coronavirus in children were identified." The chief physician of the Rassvet children's clinic, Sergei Butriy, shares his observations: “The Indian Delta strain leads to hospitalizations and complications in children twice as often as the Wuhan strain.” Chief physician of the city clinical hospital No. 52 Maryana Lysenko Agree: “Now children are sick, and they are sick quite seriously, and they have a wide variety of consequences of the infection.”

One of the most dangerous consequences of the disease is multisystem inflammatory syndrome, striking heart, lungs, blood vessels, kidneys, digestive system, brain, skin and eyes. Everyone in the USA has encountered it. hundredth* ill minor - total 5217 patients (average age 9 years), 46 of them died.

Less dangerous, but more common is post-Covid (aka post-Covid syndrome): they, according to observations British doctors, every seventh child aged 11 to 17 years suffers for at least three months after recovery. Doctors named headache and fatigue as the most common manifestations of post-Covid. Italian data researchers even more serious. More than half of children aged 6 to 16 years who had the infection had at least one post-Covid symptom that lasted longer than 120 days after recovery, with 42.6% reporting that their daily activities were disrupted due to these symptoms.

Thus, in recent months, childhood morbidity has quantitatively overtaken the statistics in the 50+ group, while mortality continues to remain at a low level. However, this is not a reason to relax - after an infection, many children are left with residual symptoms that significantly worsen their quality of life.

*Data on multisystem inflammatory syndrome covers the period from the beginning of the pandemic to October 4, and data on the number of cases under 18 years of age covers the period from October 21, and therefore there may be a slight statistical error.

Mostly not true

What do our verdicts mean?

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