![]() ![]() Consequently, death due to COVID-19 is extremely rare in CYP, even among those with underlying conditions. ![]() Severe COVID-19 requiring hospitalisation is uncommon in CYP, and intensive care admission even less so, occurring mainly in CYP with serious underlying medical conditions. In contrast to adults, and particularly older adults who have a high risk of severe and fatal COVID-19, most CYP have asymptomatic infection or a mild, transient, and often non-specific illness when exposed to SARS-CoV-2. In England, national testing data showed that, by, 1 in 4 SARS-CoV-2-confirmed cases (24.3%) were in children and young people (CYP) aged <20 years, who accounted for 23.6% of the English population in 2020. Although studies at the start of the pandemic suggested that children may be less susceptible than adults, wider testing and surveillance indicate that children are as likely to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 as adults. In England alone, more than 18 million cases have been confirmed by 4 April 2022, with almost 158,000 deaths with COVID-19 recorded on the death certificate. Two years on, there have been more than 500 million confirmed cases and 6 million deaths reported worldwide. On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus responsible for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Second-Generation Surveillance System UKHSA, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 SGSS, Paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome SARS-CoV-2, Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children NHS, įunding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.Ĭenter for Disease Prevention and Control CI, For more information on accessing UKHSA protected data, see. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: Data cannot be shared publicly because this analysis was undertaken as part of UKHSA's legal requirement for public health surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic and, as such, authors cannot make the underlying dataset publicly available, especially given the sensitivity of the subject matter, the vulnerability of the population in question and the small case numbers which could potentially lead to deductive disclosure of individuals. Received: Accepted: OctoPublished: November 8, 2022Ĭopyright: © 2022 Bertran et al. PLoS Med 19(11):Īcademic Editor: Amitabh Bipin Suthar, PLOS Medicine Editorial Board, UNITED STATES (2022) COVID-19 deaths in children and young people in England, March 2020 to December 2021: An active prospective national surveillance study. Limitations include possible under-ascertainment of deaths in CYP who were not tested for SARS-CoV-2 and lack of direct access to clinical data for hospitalised CYP.Ĭitation: Bertran M, Amin-Chowdhury Z, Davies HG, Allen H, Clare T, Davison C, et al. Over the 22-month surveillance period, SARS-CoV-2 was responsible for 1.2% (81/6,790) of all deaths in CYP aged <20 years, with an infection fatality rate of 0.70/100,000 SARS-CoV-2 infections in this age group estimated through real-time, nowcasting modelling, and a mortality rate of 0.61/100,000. Of the COVID-19 deaths, 61 (75.3%) had an underlying condition, especially severe neurodisability ( n = 27) and immunocompromising conditions ( n = 12). Half the COVID-19 deaths (41/81, 50.6%) occurred within 7 days of confirmation of SARS-CoV-2 infection and 91% (74/81) within 30 days. Compared to non-COVID-19 deaths in CYP with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test, death due to COVID-19 was independently associated with older age (aOR 1.06 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.01 to 1.11, p = 0.02) and underlying comorbidities (aOR 2.52 95% CI 1.27 to 5.01, p = 0.008), after adjusting for age, sex, ethnicity group, and underlying conditions, with a shorter interval between SARS-CoV-2 testing and death. There were 185 deaths during the 22-month follow-up and 81 (43.8%) were due to COVID-19. CYP aged <20 years who died within 100 days of laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection between 01 March 2020 and 31 December 2021 in England were followed up in detail, using national databases, surveillance questionnaires, post-mortem reports, and clinician interviews. ![]()
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