The number of children hospitalized with COVID-19 may have been overcounted, according to a recent study published online in Hospital Pediatrics (pdf) on May 19.
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine examined COVID-19 cases from Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford for nine months between May 10, 2020, as the hospital began to test all of its inpatients for COVID-19, and Feb. 10, 2021.
During that time, 117 children had either tested positive for COVID-19 or were hospitalized for multi-system inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), a rare condition that causes inflammation in different parts of the body, including the organs.
Of the 117 patients, nearly 40 percent of the cases were asymptomatic, 28.2 percent had mild to moderate COVID-19, 7.7 percent had severe illness, 12.8 percent had a critical illness, and 12 percent had MIS-C. It was determined that the CCP virus was unlikely to be the cause of admission in 45 percent of the patients (n=53).
The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, causes the disease COVID-19.
“It’s really important that we distinguish between children who are hospitalized with asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections and those hospitalized for COVID-19 disease,” Dr. Alan Schroeder, co-author of the study and clinical professor of pediatric critical care told Stanford Medicine News Center.
“Our goal is to make sure we have accurate data on how sick children are getting. If we rely on hospitals’ positive SARS-CoV-2 test results, we are inflating by about two-fold the actual risk of hospitalization from the disease in kids,” he added.
Read full story here: Article Source: Children Admitted to the Hospital With COVID-19 May Be Overcounted: Study