Childrens' COVID-19 risk overstated in hospitalization data--new studies

Studies find hospitalization data overstate kids’ COVID-19 risk A pair of studies found 40-45% of children admitted to California hospitals were infected with the virus but weren’t sick from it and had sought treatment for something else. ***@***.*** The Mercury News

A pair of new studies suggest reported hospitalization rates vastly overstate children’s risk from COVID-19, with nearly half of hospitalized kids who were found to be infected suffering no illness from the virus and seeking treatment for other ailments.

The studies and an accompanying opinion article in Hospital Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, indicate children continue to be at low risk from COVID-19 even as reported infection rates among them have risen.

“We found at least 45% of our patients came in for a completely different reason — appendicitis, anaphylaxis — and were found to be COVID-positive because of universal testing upon admission,” said Dr. Roshni Mathew, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stanford University and co-author of one of the studies.

The findings, health experts say, are significant to allay fears as parents and policy-makers weigh risks to children with schools and businesses reopening amid falling infection rates and rising vaccinations, for which children under 12 aren’t yet eligible.

“I think this is important because we really want to be as accurate as possible in assessing risk in children,” said Dr. Amy Beck, a pediatrician and associate professor at UC San Francisco who co-authored an opinion article about the studies in the journal. Beck noted that the COVID-19 risk to children “is not zero — there are kids in both studies that were severely ill — but it was actually a smaller percentage of the total than the data would suggest.”

“We just need to be mindful of that in thinking of the risks and benefits of keeping schools closed or kids out of other programs really important to their health,” Beck said.

But Mathew said her study doesn’t mean kids don’t need to be vaccinated.

“Although we found what we found, there were still children who were severely ill in a hospital,” Mathew said. “Many of them were previously healthy children. It doesn’t take away importance of vaccinating children who are eligible.” ...