“The dangerous information is that it wasn’t higher than the flu both,” Grosso mentioned. “We have to understand that influenza stays a critical well being danger in childhood, particularly for these below 2, these with underlying well being issues or each.”
The brand new research included 315 kids, median age 8.4 years, who had been recognized with COVID-19 between March 25 and Could 15, 2020. Their medical data had been in comparison with these of greater than 1,400 kids, median age 3.9 years, who had been recognized with seasonal flu between Oct. 1, 2019 and June 6, 2020.
Of the COVID-19 sufferers, about 17% ended up needing hospitalization, together with almost 6% who had been admitted to the ICU and three% who had been placed on ventilators.
Among the many flu sufferers, simply over 21% had been hospitalized, 7% had been admitted to the ICU, and about 2% had been placed on ventilators, based on the research printed on-line Sept. 8 in JAMA Community Open.
In each teams, fever was the commonest symptom on the time of analysis, adopted by cough. Youngsters hospitalized with COVID-19 had been extra doubtless than these hospitalized with the flu to have fever (76% versus 55%), cough (48% versus 31%), diarrhea or vomiting (26% versus 12%), headache (11% versus 3%), physique ache (22% versus 7%), and chest ache (11% versus 3%).
The researchers additionally discovered that there was a sudden drop in flu circumstances on the hospital after native faculties closed in mid-March and stay-at-home orders had been issued about two weeks later to cut back the unfold of the new coronavirus.
The impact of college closures on the unfold of the coronavirus is the following focus of their analysis, the research authors mentioned.
“We wish to assess the quantitative affect of college closures so we will decide at what level the price of closing faculties and staying at dwelling outweighs the advantage of decreasing transmission of COVID-19 and burdens on the well being care system,” Music defined.
Grosso agreed that as flu season approaches, discovering the solutions to these questions turns into extra pressing.
“What we do not know is how present social distancing efforts will affect the variety of contaminated kids or what number of will get simultaneous an infection with SARS-CoV-2 [the virus that causes COVID-19] and one other virus,” Grosso mentioned. “We are able to solely hope that these efforts — and flu immunization on the earliest potential time — will defend children from the worst of those viral infections.”
