Impact on Child Health
COVID-19 is not a benign disease in children. It has had a significant impact on children’s health as outlined below:
- Over 13 million children have been infected with COVID-19 since the pandemic’s onset.
- More than 42,000 children have been hospitalized.
- At least 1,240 children aged 18 and younger have died.
- Over 8,000 patients met the case definition for multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children, and that there have been 68 deaths among these patients.
- Patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection had 16-18 times higher risk for myocarditis compared with patients without SARS-CoV-2.
- Researchers found that hospitalizations associated with COVID-19 were higher than influenza-related hospitalizations in the three years prior to the pandemic.
- Studies show that children and adolescents aged 18 years and younger with COVID-19 were more likely to receive a new diabetes diagnosis.
- Recent studies show that around 2% of children experience Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 and symptoms that persist beyond 56 days.
- Compared with 2019, the proportion of mental health-related visits to the emergency room for children aged 5–11 and 12–17 years increased approximately 24% and 31%, respectively.
- Between April 1, 2020, through June 30, 2021, over 140,000 children in the US experienced the death of a parent or grandparent caregiver. The risk of such loss was 1.1 to 4.5 times higher among children of racial and ethnic minorities, compared to Non-Hispanic White children.
- The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in drops in academic achievement for K-12 students, with ongoing decreases in performance in both math and reading compared to pre-pandemic levels. Academic progress for students of color appears to be disproportionately impacted.
COVID-19 Vaccine Data
- Receipt of 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccine is effective in preventing COVID-19-associated emergency department and urgent care encounters and hospitalizations among non-immunocompromised persons aged 5-17 years.
- Receipt of 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccine is highly effective in preventing MIS-C in adolescents aged 12-18 years; estimated effectiveness was 91%.
- The risk of myocarditis in young males (12-17 years of age) following SARS-CoV-2 infection was up to 6 times higher compared to the risk of myocarditis in young males after receipt of the mRNA vaccine (Singer et al., Risk of Myocarditis from COVID-19 Infection in People Under Age 20: A Population-Based Analysis. Prepublication; NIH and university-affiliated authors)
- As of January 2022, out of over 8.5 million COVID-19 vaccines administered to 5-11 year olds, there have been 12 reports of post-vaccine myocarditis meeting the case definition.
- Receipt of 2 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is effective in preventing both asymptomatic and symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection with the Omicron variant among children and adolescents aged 5–15 years.
Additional Information
Last Updated
05/27/2022
Source
American Academy of Pediatrics