COVID-19 in pediatric patient

Excerpt

We read with great interest the work of García-Vera et al. [1], who paid a lot of attention to childhood infections due to COVID-19 disease. Currently, as the authors themselves point out, the percentage of children requiring hospitalization is very small, but according to a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Association of Children’s Hospitals, the number of childhood cases has more than quadrupled in the last month (from about 38,000 cases a week at the end of July, to over 180,000 cases in children for the week ending August 19). A very important fact is that the number of pediatric wards is much smaller than those for adult patients, which will be an additional problem for the significantly growing group of children suffering from COVID-19. Recent studies focusing mainly on unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people who found the Delta variant deserves special attention. This increases the risk of hospitalization for COVID-19 by a factor of 26 compared to the hitherto dominant alpha variant, which is important as it shows how it will affect the percentage of children who may be hospitalized for lack of vaccination [2]. Currently, vaccinations are only allowed over the age of 12, which may pose a risk to younger, unvaccinated children. Parents of younger children should be vaccinated against SARC-CoV-2 and use the so-called cocoon vaccination. The cocoon method is where everyone around the person who cannot be vaccinated is vaccinated—if the entire environment of a child is vaccinated, the possibility of the child becoming infected is significantly reduced. With the current infectivity of the delta variant, a much larger population of pediatric patients will become ill and will require hospitalization, and thus, the number of childhood complications may increase significantly, although they are not fully known to us. …