Does Omicron hit kids harder? Scientists are trying to find out
Source: Nature
As the highly transmissible Omicron coronavirus variant has swept the globe in the past two months, millions of people have been hospitalized. Children have been no exception, and, in the United States, they have made up a larger proportion of COVID-19 hospitalizations than at any other time of the pandemic.
Such paediatric hospitalizations might seem concerning, but estimates show that the individual risk of a child with Omicron being hospitalized is, in fact, lower — by one-third to one-half — than it was when the Delta variant was dominant. And hospitalized children are not presenting with any more severe illness than they were with other variants, says Michael Absoud, a specialist in women and children’s health at King’s College London. Preliminary UK data show that although there has been an increase in the proportion of children hospitalized with COVID-19 has increased during the Omicron wave — especially those under the age of one — the children have required fewer medical interventions, such as ventilators and supplemental oxygen.
These findings mirror the trend in the general population: Omicron seems less likely than Delta to cause hospitalization or death, especially in immunized and younger populations. But scientists are still trying to work out why Omicron has led to disproportionately more hospitalizations in children. In the United States, for example, children make up about 5% of all COVID-19 hospitalizations — a proportion up to four times higher than that of previous coronavirus waves.
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LINK:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00309-x