A comparative study of clinical and laboratory features of COVID-19 in children aged 0-14 years old

Pavlova М., Tomov T., Velikov P., Getsova J., Yordanova R., Kapintseva N., Popov M., Akcentieva Y., Velinova A., Ivanov I.R., Tolchkov V., Korsun N., Velev V.

National Center for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases, Ministry of Health, Sofia, Bulgaria
Department of Infectious Diseases, Parasitology and Tropical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Medical University, Sofia; Specialized Hospital for Active Treatment of Infectious and Parasitic Diseases “Prof. Iv. Kirov”, Sofia, Bulgaria
Department of Infectious Diseases, St. Iv. Rilski”, Dupnitsa, Bulgaria
University Hospital “St. Anna”, Sofia, Bulgaria

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) was a pandemic that emerged in early 2019, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Children accounted for a small proportion of the total number of patients with COVID-19. We studied 110 children between the ages of 0 and 14 who were treated in three hospitals in Bulgaria. The children were divided into three groups: those treated as outpatients only, those admitted to standard COVID-19 wards, and those admitted to intensive care units. The most common symptoms were fever, cough, sore throat, nasal congestion, and, less commonly, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain, rapid breathing, tachycardia, and rarely the development of multisystem inflammation syndrome in children.. Older children, mostly with catarrhal symptoms, were treated on an outpatient basis, while younger children were hospitalized, especially those with fever, respiratory disorders, and laboratory evidence of inflammation. Children with multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) or respiratory failure were treated in intensive care units. Obesity and neurological diseases are the main factors leading to a more severe disease course during COVID-19 infection.