Durban – As more pupils make their way back to school for the resumption of the 2020 school year and news of schools closing due to Covid-19 cases, parents are apprehensive to send their children back to class.
However, according to a recent report by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD), children made up less than 7% of all reported Covid-19 cases in South Africa and are less likely to be admitted to the Intensive Care Unit or die, when compared to adults.
The report states Covid-19 is also uncommon in South African children, including those of school-going age, between 5 and 18. Furthermore, in all cases, children who have contracted the coronavirus suffer milder symptoms than adults.
According to the report, of the 230 children in SA admitted with Covid-19, 16 were admitted into ICU and six were ventilated at some point during admission.
Three children aged between 0-9 have died from the virus.
"At analysis, 167 had been discharged, 56 were still admitted, four had been transferred to other facilities and three had died during admission. The overall median length of hospital stay was three days.
"The majority of the children were under the age of 10 with 50 under the age of one. In the three cases where children died, they all had severe underlying medical conditions including dilated cardiomyopathy, leukaemia, hypertension and diabetes mellitus," the report noted.
The report presented data on individuals younger than or aged 18 from two surveillance systems conducted for monitoring the Covid-19 pandemic in SA.
"From both programmes, children made up less than 7% of all reported cases in South Africa, despite constituting approximately one-third of the South African population.
"From the laboratory-based surveillance, which has limited data on clinical presentation, the majority of cases were in the older age group, which also had the highest incidence risk. This data suggests that, similar to data from other countries, the burden of Covid-19 disease is lower in young children compared to adults," the report found.
The majority of reported cases were from the Western Cape, reflecting the current epidemiology in South Africa, with Western Cape reporting more than 60% of total cases.
The highest incidence risk was among females, similar to data among older individuals, which may reflect health-seeking practices or differential exposure to Covid-19 within community settings.
Based on the electronic data collection system, DATCOV, hospital surveillance presented demographic and clinical characteristics of children admitted with Covid-19 at sentinel hospital sites.
Among the Covid-19 admissions in children, the median age at admission was lower than that among all diagnosed cases, which may suggest that severe disease may be more common among younger children or that clinicians are more likely to admit younger children as a precaution.
The report found that, in addition, some of the younger cases were newborns who may have been admitted for birth-related complications or precautionary reasons rather than Covid-19-related illness.
"Of the children admitted, who were younger than 18, only 7% were admitted into ICU, 2% ventilated and 1% died. Given that the corresponding figures for adults are 13%, 6% and 14% for ICU admission, ventilation and death, respectively, this suggests that the children may have been admitted with milder forms of disease.
"In most countries dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic for longer and with larger numbers of cases than South Africa, small numbers of deaths among children with Covid-19 have been reported."
Analysis found children who did die, had other severe comorbidities and the role of Covid-19 in disease progression was unclear.
"This highlighted the need for better determination of causes of death so that final death classifications can be possible," the report found.