Coronavirus: Risk to Children is Small from COVID - Facts

Coronavirus: Risk to Children is Small from COVID - Facts

It is difficult to find clearly stated, factual numeric data about children and COVID. The CDC has very little numeric data or raw numbers. Unicef's page is garbage.

If you know of ANY credible sources of hard data, raw numbers Or other information about coronavirus and children, please use the feedback form to tell us about it!

Here is what's currently available:

The American Academy of Pediatrics

The AAP appears to have the most clear and accurate data about children and COVID. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, he risk to children is very small, saying

"At this time, it appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is rare among children. "

The academy reports on September 8, 2020:

"Hospitalizations (23 states and NYC reported) Children were 0.7%-3.7% of total reported hospitalizations, and between 0.3%-8.3% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in hospitalization
Mortality (42 states and NYC reported)* Children were 0%-0.3% of all COVID-19 deaths, and 18 states reported zero child deaths. In states reporting, 0%-0.2% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death"

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has a few general observations:

• A small proportion (<5%) of overall COVID-19 cases reported in the EU/EEA and the UK are among children (those aged 18 years and under). When diagnosed with COVID-19, children are much less likely to be hospitalised or have fatal outcomes than adults.
• Children are more likely to have a mild or asymptomatic infection, meaning that the infection may go undetected or undiagnosed.

The CDC's data on COVID and Children

The CDC's website has a few pages on the subject, but they are positively dreadful. Nothing is clearly stated or clearly presented. I challenge you to make sense out of this page: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6914e4.htm It appears as though this page dates back to April 2, 2020 which could explain the ambiguity, but why hasn't the page been updated, replaced or redirected in the 5 months since?

Even the CDC's summary is ambiguous:

"Data from China suggest that pediatric coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases might be less severe than cases in adults and that children (persons aged <18 years) might experience different symptoms than adults."

Different symptoms? What about the severity? The frequency? data from China? 6 months on, the CDC has no data of its own from the U.S.?

They add:

relatively few children with COVID-19 are hospitalized, and fewer children than adults experience fever, cough, or shortness of breath. Severe outcomes have been reported in children, including three ... deaths.

There is another page, more recent, updated Aug. 18, 2020 which is not specifically about children, but includes some data : https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-age.html

This table (below) is from that page. It compares various age groups against the 18-29 year old group. It is difficult to make sense of the data, since they are only providing comparions, no hard raw data, and nothing about the sources of the data.

The CDC has yet another page from August 19, 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/pediatric-hcp.html , stating:

Hospitalization rates in children are significantly lower than hospitalization rates in adults with COVID-19, suggesting that children may have less severe illness from COVID-19 compared to adults.^{5, 6} Visit CDC's Cases, Data, and Surveillance page for current CDC data.

Some key excepts from the CDC's August 19, 2020 page:

• Recent COVID-19 hospitalization surveillance data shows that the rate of hospitalization among children is low (8.0 per 100,000 population) compared with that in adults (164.5 per 100,000 population),...
• There is limited evidence about which underlying medical conditions in children might increase the risk for severe illness.
• Children with symptoms of an infectious disease should not attend school, but the length of time the child should stay home depends on the most likely etiology of illness (COVID-19 or not). Return to school policies for children with COVID-19 should be based on CDC's recommendation for discontinuation of home isolation. A negative test or doctor's note should not be required for return to school upon completion of the 10 days of isolation with improvement of symptoms.