“The dangerous information is that it wasn’t higher than the flu both,” Grosso mentioned. “We have to needless to say influenza stays a severe well being threat in childhood, particularly for these below 2, these with underlying well being issues or each.”
The brand new research included 315 youngsters, median age 8.4 years, who had been identified with COVID-19 between March 25 and Might 15, 2020. Their medical information had been in comparison with these of greater than 1,400 youngsters, median age 3.9 years, who had been identified 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, in response to the research revealed on-line Sept. 8 in JAMA Community Open.
In each teams, fever was the most typical symptom on the time of analysis, adopted by cough. Youngsters hospitalized with COVID-19 had been extra possible 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 instances on the hospital after native faculties closed in mid-March and stay-at-home orders had been issued about two weeks later to scale back the unfold of the new coronavirus.
The impact of faculty closures on the unfold of the coronavirus is the subsequent focus of their analysis, the research authors mentioned.
“We need to assess the quantitative impression of faculty closures so we are able to decide at what level the price of closing faculties and staying at house outweighs the advantage of decreasing transmission of COVID-19 and burdens on the well being care system,” Track 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 youngsters 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 will solely hope that these efforts — and flu immunization on the earliest doable time — will defend youngsters from the worst of those viral infections.”
