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Published on: November 10, 2023
Paediatric admissions with SARS-CoV-2 during the Delta and Omicron waves: an Australian single-centre retrospective
Daryl R Cheng1,2,3, Silja Schrader2, Alissa McMinn2
1Department of General Medicine, Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia daryl.cheng@rch.org.au.
Background:
The clinical course of Australian children admitted to hospital with COVID-19 infection is not well understood, particularly over the Omicron period.
Methods:
This study describes paediatric admissions to a single tertiary paediatric institution through the Delta and Omicron variant waves. All children admitted from 1 June 2021 to 30 September 2022 with a diagnosis of COVID-19 infection were included for analysis.
Results:
117 patients were admitted during the Delta wave compared with 737 during the Omicron wave. The median length of stay was 3.3 days (IQR 1.7-6.75.1) during Delta, compared with 2.1 days (IQR 1.1-4.53.4) during Omicron (p<0.01). 83 patients (9.7%) required intensive care unit (ICU) admission, a greater proportion during Delta (20, 17.1%) than Omicron (63, 8.6%, p<0.01). Patients admitted to the ICU were less likely to have received a dose of COVID-19 vaccination prior to admission than patients admitted to the ward (8, 24.2% vs 154, 45.8%, p=0.028).
Conclusion:
The Omicron wave resulted in an absolute increase in the number of children compared with Delta, but cases had lower severity, demonstrated by shorter length of stay and a smaller proportion of patients requiring intensive care. This is consistent with US and UK data describing a similar pattern.
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