Pediatric Infectious Diseases: Open Access

Abstract

COVID -19 pandemic has engulfed the Whole world in an unimaginable health crisis leading to significant loss of human lives and chaotic overburdened healthcare systems all over globe. There had been enough literature published with adult disease presentation and management mainly from China and western world. At the end of the second wave of pandemic, WHO COVID-19 dashboard shows India as second most affected country in the world behind the USA. In India, State of Maharashtra had been the worst affected state and Pune remains the city with highest case load as per COVID -19 Dashboard of Government of Maharashtra. Despite this there are limited studies available on the pattern of paediatric COVID-19 infections from India.Therefore, we aimed to collate the data for clinical profile of paediatric patients from our tertiary centre institute in Pune which encountered a high case load of patients with COVID-19 infection during first wave of pandemic. We conducted a retrospective observational cohort study over 6 months from 1st April 2020 to 30th September 2020. 148 children hospitalised with confirmed SARS CoV-2 infection were included in the study. Of these 57 (38.5%) were asymptomatic and 91(61.5%) were symptomatic. Fever was the commonest presenting feature in 65(43.9%), followed by cough 34(23%) and runny nose in 25(16.9%). PICU admission was needed in 9 (6.1%) patients and there was one neonatal death. This study confirmed that the pattern of disease is mild in children with a high number of asymptomatic patients and rare mortality due to COVID-19 infection.