According to a National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) report, 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.
COVID-19 is uncommon in South African children including among the school-going children aged five to 18 years and when it occurs it is milder than in adults.
This is encouraging given the re-opening of schools in South Africa and is consistent with data from other counties, the report concludes. Nn all cases, children who have contracted the coronavirus suffer milder symptoms than adults.
"The implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions such as using masks, physical distancing and hand washing or sanitising within schools need to be strengthened to prevent children acquiring SARS-CoV2 infections.
"The number of deaths in this population was small but any severe illness in children in this age group is concerning nonetheless and steps to minimise COVID-19 transmission such as physical distancing and use of masks should be consistently applied where possible, even among children."
Of the 230 children in South Africa 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, reports I0l.
The report presented data on individuals younger than or aged 18 from two surveillance systems conducted for monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. "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.
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.
[link url="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/children-less-likely-to-die-from-covid-19-nicd-report-confirms-50237212"]Full Iol report[/link]
[link url="https://www.nicd.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Laboratory-confirmed-cases-of-COVID-19-aged-%E2%89%A418-years.pdf"]NICD report[/link]