Preliminary epidemiological analysis on children and adolescents with novel coronavirus disease 2019 outside Hubei Province, China: an observational study utilizing crowdsourced data
View ORCID ProfileBrandon Michael Henry, Maria Helena S Oliveira
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.01.20029884
Abstract
Background: The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to expand across the world. Though both the number of cases and mortality rate in children and adolescents is reported to be low in comparison to adults, limited data has been reported on the outbreak with respect to pediatric patients. To elucidate information, we utilized crowdsourced data to perform a preliminary epidemiologic analysis of pediatric patients with COVID-19 Methods: In this observational study, data was collected from two open-access, line list crowdsourced online databases. Pediatric cases of COVID-19 were defined as patients ≤19 years of age with a laboratory confirmed diagnosis. The primary outcomes were case counts and cumulative case counts. Secondary outcomes included days between symptoms onset and first medical care and days between first medical care and reporting. Tertiary outcomes were rate of travel to Wuhan, rate of infected family members and rates of symptoms. Results: A total of 82 patients were included. The median age was 10 [IQR: 5-15] years. Patients from mainland China (outside Hubei) accounted for 46.3% of cases, while the remaining 53.7% of cases were international. Males and females accounted for 52.4% and 32.9% of cases, respectively, with the remaining 14.6% being designated as unknown. A male skew persisted across subgroup analyses by age group (p=1.0) and location (inside/outside China) (p=0.22). While the number of reported international cases has been steadily increasing over the study period, the number of reported cases in China rapidly decreased from the start point. The median reporting delay was 3 [IQR: 2-4.8] days. The median delay between symptom onset and first seeking medical care was 1 [IQR: 0-3.25] day. In international cases, time to first seeking medical care was a median of 2.5 days longer than in China (p=0.04). When clinical features were reported, fever was the most common presentation (68.0%), followed by cough (36.0%). Conclusions: The number of reported international pediatric COVID-19 cases is rapidly increasing. COVID-19 infections are, to-date, more common in males than females in both the children and adolescent age groups. Additionally, this male predominance remains the case both inside and outside of China. Crowdsourced data enabled early analysis of epidemiologic variables in pediatric patients with COVID-19. Further data sharing is required to enable analyses that are required to understand the course of this infection in children.
