Children and COVID-19 Research Library

The frequency of vaccine refusal, which is associated with many factors, is increasing worldwide. The aim of this study was to predict the frequency of vaccine refusal against domestic and foreign COVID-19 vaccines and identify the factors underlying refusal.

Public health responses often lack the infrastructure to capture the impact of public health emergencies on pregnant women and infants, with limited mechanisms for linking pregnant women with their infants nationally to monitor long-term effects. In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in close collaboration with state, local, and territorial health departments, began a 5-year initiative to establish population-based mother–baby linked longitudinal surveillance, the Surveillance for Emerging Threats to Mothers and Babies Network (SET-NET). The objective of this report is to describe an expanded surveillance approach that leverages and modernizes existing surveillance systems to address the impact of emerging health threats during pregnancy on pregnant women and their infants.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic affects medical care worldwide, including patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Thus, we aimed to assess its impact on health care provision, fear of infection, adherence to medical treatment, and compliance with preventative instructions in children and adolescents with IBD.

COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, is mild to moderate in the majority of previously healthy individuals, but can cause life-threatening disease or persistent debilitating symptoms in some cases. The most important determinant of disease severity is age, with individuals over 65 years having the greatest risk of requiring intensive care, and men are more susceptible than women. In contrast to other respiratory viral infections, young children seem to be less severely affected. It is now clear that mild to severe acute infection is not the only outcome of COVID-19, and long-lasting symptoms are also possible. In contrast to severe acute COVID-19, such ‘long COVID’ is seemingly more likely in women than in men. Also, postinfectious hyperinflammatory disease has been described as an additional outcome after SARS-CoV-2 infection. Here our current understanding of the immunological determinants of COVID-19 disease presentation and severity is discussed, and it is related to known immune-system differences between young and old people and between men and women, and other factors associated with different disease presentations and severity.

As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, obtaining information on symptoms dynamics is of essence. Here, we extracted data from primary-care electronic health records and nationwide distributed surveys to assess the longitudinal dynamics of symptoms prior to and throughout SARS-CoV-2 infection. Information was available for 206,377 individuals, including 2471 positive cases. The two datasources were discordant, with survey data capturing most of the symptoms more sensitively. The most prevalent symptoms included fever, cough and fatigue. Loss of taste and smell 3 weeks prior to testing, either self-reported or recorded by physicians, were the most discriminative symptoms for COVID-19. Additional discriminative symptoms included self-reported headache and fatigue and a documentation of syncope, rhinorrhea and fever. Children had a significantly shorter disease duration. Several symptoms were reported weeks after recovery. By a unique integration of two datasources, our study shed light on the longitudinal course of symptoms experienced by cases in primary care.

To date, influenza epidemics have been considered suitable for use as a model for the COVID-19 epidemic, given that they are respiratory diseases with similar modes of transmission. However, data directly comparing the two diseases are scarce. This study did a nationwide retrospective cohort study using the French national administrative database (PMSI), which includes discharge summaries for all hospital admissions in France. All patients hospitalised for COVID-19 from March 1 to April 30, 2020, and all patients hospitalised for influenza between Dec 1, 2018, and Feb 28, 2019, were included.

Understanding severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and transmission in educational settings is crucial for ensuring the safety of staff and children during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study estimated he rate of SARS-CoV-2 infection and outbreaks among staff and students in educational settings during the summer half-term (June–July, 2020) in England. In this prospective, cross-sectional analysis, Public Health England initiated enhanced national surveillance in educational settings in England that had reopened after the first national lockdown, from June 1 to July 17, 2020.

Save the Children Somalia conducted a rapid assessment covering the entirety of Somalia between the 13th to 16th of April, 2020. The findings of the assessment will inform the defining and prioritizing of the RCCE strategy and key communication and community engagement plan; including contextualized key messages tailored to circumstances of vulnerable communities, defining key actions/activities, and tailor and test materials. Ultimately, the exercise will increase the effectiveness of our communication activities and therefore the impact of the overall response. Furthermore, meaningful participatory engagement and adapting messages to the local context and audience is also proven to lead to stronger ownership, buy-in, and commitment, as well as maintaining/increasing access, and strengthening the organization’s integrity and reputation. 

This article aims to undertake a systematic review of reviews of the prevalence of symptoms and signs of COVID-19 in those aged under 20 years. Narrative systematic review of reviews. PubMed, medRxiv, Europe PMC and COVID-19 Living Evidence Database were searched on 9 October 2020.

In comparison with adults, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection in children has a milder course. The management of children with suspected or confirmed coronavirus disease (COVID-19) needs to be appropriately targeted. A hub-and-spoke system was designed, to provide healthcare indications based on the use of telemedicine and stringent admission criteria, to coordinate local stakeholders and to disseminate information.

Recent research indicates that patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D) are at higher risk for disordered eating behaviors (DEBs) than their peers without diabetes. The present study aimed to explore the prevalence of DEBs in a sample of Italian children and adolescents with T1D and in matched-pair healthy controls during the COVID-19 lockdown. In a cross-sectional study, 138 children and adolescents with T1D (aged 8.01–19.11 years, 65 boys) attending a Southern Italian diabetic service and 276 age- and gender-matched healthy peers voluntarily completed an online survey about eating behaviors (ChEAT and EAT-26), anthropometric characteristics, and clinical characteristics.

The role of children in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 remains highly controversial. To address this issue, a meta-analysis of the published literature on household SARSCoV-2 transmission clusters (n=213 from 12 countries) was performed. Only 8 (3.8%) transmission clusters were identified as having a paediatric index case. Asymptomatic index cases were associated with a lower secondary attack in contacts than symptomatic index cases (estimate risk ratio [RR], 0.17; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.09-0.29). To determine the susceptibility of children to household infections the secondary attack rate (SAR) in paediatric household contacts was assessed. The secondary attack rate in paediatric household contacts was lower than in adult household contacts (RR, 0.62; 95% CI, 0.42- 0.91). These data have important implications for the ongoing management of the COVID-19 pandemic, including potential vaccine prioritization strategies.

While COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe, diligent efforts are made to understand its attributes and dynamics to help develop treatment and prevention measures. The paradox pertaining to children being the least affected by severe illness poses exciting opportunities to investigate potential protective factors. The Hypothesis of  this paper is that childhood vaccination against pertussis (whooping cough) might play a non-specific protective role against COVID-19 through heterologous adaptive responses in this young population. Pertussis is a vaccine-preventable infectious disease of the respiratory tract and it shares many similarities with COVID-19 including transmission and clinical features. Although pertussis is caused by a bacterium (Bordetella pertussis) while COVID-19 is a viral infection (SARS-CoV-2), previous data showed that cross-reactivity and heterologous adaptive responses can be seen with unrelated agents of highly divergent groups, such as between bacteria and viruses.