In its latest study, the Lancet Child and Adolescent Health journal has said that most of the children who contract coronavirus tend to suffer only a mild form of the infection and they are quite unlikely to die to coronavirus associated complications.
The study was conducted by a team of acclaimed and expert researchers from the United Kingdom and other European countries including Austria and Spain. The study took into account 582 patients aged 3-18 years.
The study took place across 82 specialist healthcare institutions across 25 countries. The study had been conduced between April 1-24, at a time when the pandemic had climbed to its peak in European nations.
The study concluded that while 62% of the total affected children had to be admitted to the hospitals, only 8% required ICU treatment.
The study also showed that chidden who needed the ventilator took a longer time compared to adults to be taken out of support. The case of fatality rate- the parentage of the study participants who died was calculated to be 0.69%.
The Lancet study researchers stated that, “Our study provides the most comprehensive overview of COVID-19 in children and adolescents to date. We were reassured to observe that the case fatality rate in our cohort was very low and it is likely to be substantially lower still, given that many children with mild disease would not have been brought to medical attention and therefore not included in this study.”
The researchers said that when the study was being conducted, many European countries were facing a massive shortage of testing capacities and this meant that a lot of children who had mild symptoms of COVID-19 weren’t being tested and the COVID-19 that they had couldn’t be diagnosed. They added that the true case fatality rate in children was likely to be lower than 0.69% according to their study.
