Two studies today describe severe COVID-19 and the related multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), the first detailing risk factors for pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) admission and death during hospitalization, and the second showing serious gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms.Very low risk of death with MIS-CUK researchers analyzed data on all hospitalizations of children 0 to 17 years in England from Feb 1, 2019, to Jan 31, 2021, related to COVID-19 and MIS-C in 2020 to 2021, nontraumatic causes in 2020 to 2021, and flu in 2019 to 2020.
The findings were published in Nature Medicine.Over the study period, which was before the harder-hitting Delta variant, 1,242,197 non-traumatic hospitalizations involved 892,906 children,