Since it was first detected, novel coronavirus disease rapidly spread, striking over 4 million people worldwide. 1 While adults with COVID-19 demonstrate a range of disease severity with 20% of infected adults being critically ill and an estimated fatality rate as high as 2%, children mostly suffer from a mild disease, only minority presenting with respiratory distress syndrome or multi-organ failure. [2][3][4] However, the role of infected children in spreading the virus to their older relatives and caregivers is yet to be determined.Many countries struggle to stave off the spreading of COVID-19 by using different strategies. In many countries, including Israel, authorities instructed the public to stay at home and to avoid visiting local clinics and hospitals as much as possible while using more telemedicine-based practice. 5 However, emergent medical situations continue to appear alongside the current outbreak and their diagnosis should still be made promptly. Delayed diagnosis and treatment of those common paediatric conditions may lead to significant morbidity that may overweigh the harm caused by COVID-19 infection.Appendicitis is the most common abdominal surgical emergency in paediatric population. 6 Early diagnosis of appendicitis

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The current outbreak of COVID-19 raging globally is taking a heavy toll on the adult population, with a rapidly growing number of newly infected and critically ill patients. However, to date, mortality rate among children is low as they mostly suffer from a mild disease. Yet, other more routinely encountered childhood diseases do not stand still and continue to be the main share of pediatricians' everyday challenges. Here we describe a case series of routinely seen pediatric diseases with delayed diagnosis due to different aspects of what we call "Corona-phobia". These cases were easily collected within a 1-week period which implies that this is a more widespread phenomenon. In conclusion, this raises the possibility that measures taken to mitigate this pandemic may be more damaging to children overall than the virus itself. We believe that pediatricians as well as policy makers should take this important aspect into consideration.

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