The cases of young patients who died in the Covid-19 epidemic in recent weeks have struck people and caused concern.
In France, the youngest was 10 years old, said Friday, April 9, Jérôme Salomon, the director general of health, adding that he had “Significant co-morbidities”. On March 24, a 16-year-old girl from Essonne died at Necker Hospital, “Without any particular illness before”, according to his family. Other cases have occurred abroad: a 5-year-old child died in the United Kingdom in early April, as well as two adolescents aged 13 and 19. A new born baby and a 9 month old baby also died in the United States. A few days earlier, a 12-year-old girl had died in Belgium.
However, these cases remain very rare. Children and adolescents have fewer severe forms and have fewer symptoms overall than the rest of the population. People with the highest risk of severe disease and death remain those over 65 and those with pre-existing medical conditions.
Less than 1% of all hospitalized patients
According to the latest weekly bulletin from the health security organization Public Health France (SpF), 110 children who were Covid-19 positive under the age of 14 were hospitalized on April 7, including 32 in intensive care. This represents less than 1% of all hospital patients. Patients between 15 and 44 were much more numerous: 2,112 were hospitalized on this date, including 514 in intensive care units, or 7% of all hospitalized persons. At the same time, the positivity rate for PCR tests is two to three times lower in children compared to adults.
Overall, these figures point in the same direction as Chinese data and international studies. In the United States, 1.7% (2,572) of Covid-19 confirmed cases concerned people under 18 as of April 2, according to figures from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A study published on February 24 in the journal Journal of the American Medical Association, covering nearly 44,672 confirmed cases, mentioned that 1% concerned young people between 10 and 19 years old and less than 1% less than 10 years old. No deaths were noted on this date.
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