Risk Factors for Severe COVID-19 in Children

Abstract

report receiving funding from the CDC EIP cooperative agreement. Libby Reeg and Laurie Billing report receiving a CDC federal grant from the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. Laurie Billing reports receiving Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity (ELC) grant funding from CDC to support vaccine preventable disease epidemiology staffing and additionally report receiving Immunizations and Vaccines for Children (VFC) grant funding from CDC. Evan Anderson has consulted for Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur, Janssen, and Medscape, and his institution receives funds to conduct clinical research unrelated to this manuscript from MedImmune, Regeneron, PaxVax, Pfizer, GSK, Merck, Sanofi-Pasteur, Janssen, and Micron. He also serves on a safety monitoring board for Kentucky BioProcessing, Inc. and Sanofi Pasteur. His institution has also received funding from NIH to conduct clinical trials of Moderna and Janssen COVID-19 vaccines. The remaining authors have nothing to disclose.

Characteristics and Clinical Outcomes of Children and Adolescents Aged <18 Years Hospitalized with COVID-19 — Six Hospitals, United States, July–August 2021

“…Five of the six hospitals had policies to test all pediatric patients for SARS-CoV-2 upon admission during the study period, allowing for detection of incidental positive SARS-CoV-2 test results. However, the proportion of such patients was smaller in this study compared with that in a previous report (1). Patients aged 0-4 and 12-17 years accounted for 79% of COVID-19-related hospitalizations in this study, which is consistent with data from other hospitals and communities (2).…”

“…Black or Hispanic in this study; an earlier study demonstrated higher hospitalization rates among Black or Hispanic children compared with White children (1). Approximately two thirds of patients hospitalized for COVID-19, including 83% and 88% of patients aged 5-11 and 12-17 years, respectively, had one or more underlying medical conditions.…”

“…Corresponding author: Valentine Wanga, qdy0@cdc.gov. 1 CDC COVID-19 Response Team; 2 Epidemic Intelligence Service, CDC; 3 Arkansas Children's, Little Rock, Arkansas; 4 Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; 5 Children's National Hospital, Washington, DC; 6 Children's Hospital New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana; 7…”

Effectiveness of BNT162b2 Vaccine against Critical Covid-19 in Adolescents

“…Despite the high level of protection afforded by vaccination 2 and the documented severity of Covid-19 in adolescents, 26 only 39% of the controls in our study were fully vaccinated against Covid-19. These data suggest that efforts to improve vaccination coverage among all adolescents, especially those at highest risk for severe Covid-19, 28 , 29 could markedly decrease the risk of severe Covid-19 among adolescents in the United States.…”

Hospitalizations of Children and Adolescents with Laboratory-Confirmed COVID-19 — COVID-NET, 14 States, July 2021–January 2022

“…Because of the large number of cases during December 2021, some sites examined clinical outcome data on a representative sample of hospitalized children. † † † Data on indicators of severe disease were collected (i.e., hospital length of stay, ICU admission, use of invasive mechanical ventilation [IMV], § § § and in-hospital death), as were data on primary reason for admission ¶ ¶ ¶ and symptoms that were present when the patient was admitted**** (3). Proportions were compared between periods of Delta predominance (July 1-December 18, 2021) and Omicron predominance (December 19-31, 2021); a variant that accounted for >50% of sequenced isolates was considered to be predominant.…”