Abstract
The epidemiological information on characteristics, in-hospital treatments, and outcomes of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) among pediatric patients has not been fully evaluated in Japan. This was a retrospective observational study conducted in the Osaka Prefecture, Japan, and we enrolled laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 patients aged ≤19 years old from January to November in 2020. Of 14,846 COVID-19 eligible patients, 1240 pediatric patients (8.4%) were registered during the study period; 329 were children aged 0–9 years (26.5%) and 911 were adolescents aged 10–19 years (73.5%). The majority of the patients exhibited mild symptoms at diagnosis (872, 70.3%), some were asymptomatic (296, 23.9%). Cluster infections occurred in child-care facilities (26, 7.9%) among children and in universities (27, 3.0%) and schools (18, 2.0%) among adolescents. The number of close-contact cases was 260 (69.0%) in children and 459 (50.4%) in adolescents. Sixty of the children (18.2%) and 90 of the adolescents (9.9%) were hospitalized. One patient received mechanical ventilation, and none underwent extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. One patient was admitted to the intensive care unit; there were no deaths. These results are useful for recognizing the clinical course from transmission route to outcomes of this infection in pediatric patients.
Highlights
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, has spread globally [1]
The aim of this study was to determine the characteristics and outcomes of pediatric COVID-19 patients aged 0–19 years in the Osaka Prefecture, Japan, using the COVID-19 patient registry managed by the Osaka Prefectural Government
The proportion of asymptomatic pediatric patients at diagnosis was about one-fourth of the total; in previous studies, the proportion of asymptomatic patients was higher in children and adolescents than in adults [2,23]
Summary
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, has spread globally [1]. Of all those infected with COVID-19 worldwide [2,3]. Unlike in the case of other respiratory infectious diseases, children may have a lower incidence risk of COVID-19 than adults. Most pediatric patients with COVID-19 exhibit mild symptoms or are asymptomatic, and only a few fatal cases have been reported [4,5,6]. The proportion of pediatric patients with severe COVID-19 was only 0.6%, as published in the first report from China [4]. Previous studies from China, the United States, and European countries reported that the common symptoms of COVID-19 among pediatric patients were fever, cough, 4.0/)
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