COVID-19 in Pediatric Patients: A Systematic Review

The coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 pandemic has been an enormous global health burden, resulting in hundreds of millions of documented infections and more than 3 million deaths. Increasing reports characterizing the effects of COVID-19 in pediatric populations have been published during the course of the pandemic. We performed a systematic review to assess the scope of diagnosis, treatment, and management of COVID-19 in pediatric patients.

We searched the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, PubMed, CINAHL, and Embase for studies published between January 1, 2020, and May 1, 2021. Each result was screened by 2 authors independently, and discordant findings were adjudicated by a third party. Data extracted included demographic data, symptom data, and clinical data including mortality, severe illness, laboratory data, radiologic data, and treatment. Bias assessment was performed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale for Cohort Studies.

We found a total of 16,266 search results, and we accepted 63 manuscripts into the review. The quality of evidence was low. It was difficult to estimate the risk of mortality in pediatric patients with COVID-19 given the quality of the evidence, but overall it is likely below 1%. The most common symptoms in symptomatic pediatric COVID-19 patients were fever (58%) and cough (50%). There was a high proportion of asymptomatic infection (65%).

Pediatric COVID-19 infection is mild and frequently asymptomatic. There is a low risk of severe illness or death in children who contract COVID-19. High-quality studies should be conducted to develop best practices for prevention, diagnosis, and management of symptomatic illness.