Study estimates 11% of children hospitalized with COVID-19 require PICU care
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Researchers recently estimated that 11% of all children hospitalized with COVID-19 will require admission to the PICU.
That estimate lines up with projections from the CDC, Beth Pathak, PhD, MSPH, founder and president of Women’s Institute for Independent Social Enquiry, and colleagues explained.
Pathak and colleagues used U.S. data and modeling studies from China to estimate the number of children nationwide who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, and found that it may be more than has been reported.
According to the study, between March 18 and April 6, 74 pediatric patients with COVID-19 from 166 facilities in 19 U.S. states that offered data had to be admitted to the PICU. The researchers estimated that the number of children infected with SARS-CoV-2 who required PICU care was one in every 2,381 — signaling that 176,190 children in the U.S. were infected during that timeframe.
“For me, the main take-home messages of our study are for policy,” Pathak told Healio. “As long as we as a nation keep the overall cumulative infection proportion low, then we will not see a huge number of children needing to be hospitalized with COVID-19. But trying to achieve ‘herd immunity,’ ie, 60% infection rate, in the absence of a high-quality vaccine will result in thousands of children needing to be hospitalized.”
“Parents, teachers, and health care providers need to remember that while the risk of severe COVID-19 in children is low, it is not zero,” she added.
According to the authors, because there are more than 74 million children in the country, the projected number of severe cases could exceed available pediatric hospital resources. – by Ken Downey Jr.
Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.
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