COVID-19 pandemic in children of Сhernivtsi region: clinical features and annual treatment experience

Abstract

Background. The pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been going on for more than a year and is a problem for the health care system worldwide. At the same time, there are few studies on the peculiarities of COVID-19 in children, in particular how clinical symptoms have changed during the year with the change of types of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Objective was to conduct a retrospective generalized analysis of the clinical course, laboratory markers and features of treatment in pediatric cases of COVID-19 in Chernivtsi region. Materials and methods. Using the retrospective cohort method, 263 clinical cases of COVID-19 in children of the Chernivtsi region hospitalized for the period of March 2020 — March 2021 were analyzed. Results. In this work, a dynamic analysis was performed of the clinical features of COVID-19 course in the population of children of Chernivtsi region, who were hospitalized during March 2020 — March 2021 at inpatient departments with signs of infection caused by SARS-CoV-2. The first group included 65 patients who were treated in the second quarter of 2020, the second group consisted of 90 children who underwent inpatient treatment in the third quarter of 2020, the third group included 87 children who were treated in the fourth quarter of 2020, and the fourth group consisted of 21 children who underwent inpatient treatment in the first quarter of 2021. It was found that the frequency of complaints of malaise was due to infectious-inflammatory, intoxication and catarrhal symptom complexes, although in contrast to the onset of the pandemic, the complaints and signs of intoxication and asthenic syndromes, infectious-inflammatory syndromes, nonspecific neurological symptoms increased with a relatively stable rate of lesions of the upper respiratory tract. In the first quarter of 2021, there was an increase in cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome (odds ratio = 6.5) and community-acquired pneumonia (odds ratio = 2.7). Conclusions. A dynamic analysis of the course of COVID-19 in children has demonstrated phenotypic deviations of the disease with torpidity to the prescribed treatment for nonspecific symptoms of disorders of the nervous system and gastrointestinal tract with a decrease in duration and severity of fever, increased incidence of pneumonia (odds ratio = 2.7) and multisystem inflammatory syndrome (odds ratio = 6.5).