Covid infection in Kids. The facts

Here is some more information about handling covid-19 in kids.

The illness starts on average 3 to 7 days after exposure but can appear up to 2 weeks later.

Overall the prognosis for children is very good, they generally do better than adults.

In a recent CDC report of 149,760 lab confirmed cases in the US only 1.7% were children.

A major Chinese study looked at information about 2,143 children with COVID-19 infections that were reported to China’s Centers for Disease Control from January 16 to February 8 of this year. Of the infections, about a third were confirmed with a laboratory test for COVID-19. The others were diagnosed based on symptoms and the results of other tests, such as x-rays.

90% of the children had illness that was asymptomatic, mild, or moderate as opposed to severe and only one child died.

The three main symptoms in children are cough (48.5%), sore throat (46.2%) and Fever (41.5%) much less common were diarrhea, fatigue and runny nose (all less than 10%). Almost all the children recovered within 2 weeks.

Interesting note: the corona virus that causes covid-19 has not been detected in breast milk so far.

Based on this information recommendations for children who show signs of Covid-19 are:

• Choose caregivers carefully. Limit the number overall, and choose those who have limited contact with other people and who can be trusted to practice social distancing, wash their hands frequently, and stay away if they feel at all sick.
• Limit the number of people who have contact with or hold young children.
• To the extent that it is possible, keep young children at home. If you take them out, keep them inside strollers or otherwise limit what they touch.
• Wash their hands even more often.

Call your doctor for advice rather than bringing your child in for mild or moderate illness. The following would warrant taking your child in to be seen:

• any trouble breathing — rapid or forceful breathing, a pale or blue color to skin, trouble feeding or talking, or doing usual activities because of breathing problems
• a high fever you can’t get down with acetaminophen (Tylenol)
• unusual sleepiness
• pain or irritability you can’t soothe
• trouble drinking or refusal to drink, and is making less urine.

So to summarize: kids get infected less often. They get sick from the virus much less often and do much better in general than older people. How fast a particular child recovers may depend on underlying conditions and other things that affect their immune systems. A healthy kid is expected to recover and be back to normal within 14 days.