Children and COVID-19 Research Library

What are the clinical outcomes and associated factors among children and adolescents hospitalized with COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa?  In this cohort study of 469 children and adolescents hospitalized with COVID-19 in 6 sub-Saharan African countries, morbidity and mortality were substantially higher than reported among those in non-African settings and were independently associated with age younger than 1 year and select noncommunicable disease comorbidities.

The COVID-19 pandemic and call for social justice is occurring when the United States, unlike its peer countries, has already experienced a steady 20-year rise in maternal morbidity and mortality with pregnant women today facing a 50 percent higher risk of mortality than their mothers.  Most vulnerable are women of color, black and American Indian/Alaska Native women, who have experienced longstanding disparities in access to and quality of healthcare and may begin pregnancy with hypertension, diabetes, and obesity, complications known to be more common in women enduring segregation. Initially, the race-related health disparities and resultant disproportionately higher rates of COVID-19 cases and mortality in indigenous communities and black, latins, or other communities of color were mistakenly considered innate racial differences. More recently, these higher rates have been attributed to underlying social, structural, and environmental determinants of health including resource inequities, inadequate housing, and occupational and environmental hazards that result in greater exposure to and less protection from COVID-19.

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2), responsible forthe coronavirus disease COVID-19, was first identified in Wuhan, China in December2019. Diabetes, as well as other cardiovascular comorbidities, has been recognized asa major risk factor for outcomes and mortality in adults with COVID-19, particularlyin the elderly with type 2 diabetes. Based on these conclusions, COVID-19 data onadults have been generalized to youth with diabetes. Nevertheless, experience frompediatric diabetes practices in China (Wuhan), Italy, Spain (Catalonia), and the UnitedStates (San Francisco Bay Area) consistently report only a single severe case ofCOVID-19 in a 20-year-old female youth with type 1 diabetes (T1D) that was hospi-talized for bilateral pneumonia and was subsequently discharged without complications.