The differential impact of pediatric COVID-19 between high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review of fatality and ICU admission in children worldwide

Taito Kitano*, Mao Kitano, Carsten Krueger, Hassan Jamal, Hatem Al Rawahi, Rachelle Lee-Krueger, Rose Doulin Sun, Sandra Isabel, Marta Taida García-Ascaso, Hiromi Hibino, Bettina Camara, Marc Isabel, Leanna Cho, Helen E. Groves, Pierre Philippe Piché-Renaud, Michael Kossov, Ikuho Kou, Ilsu Jon, Ana C. Blanchard, Nao MatsudaQuenby Mahood, Anupma Wadhwa, Ari Bitnun, Shaun K. Morris

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

99 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

Background: The overall global impact of COVID-19 in children and regional variability in pediatric outcomes are presently unknown. 

Methods: To evaluate the magnitude of global COVID-19 death and intensive care unit (ICU) admission in children aged 0-19 years, a systematic review was conducted for articles and national reports as of December 7, 2020. This systematic review is registered with PROSPERO (registration number: CRD42020179696). 

Results: We reviewed 16,027 articles as well as 225 national reports from 216 countries. Among the 3,788 global pediatric COVID-19 deaths, 3,394 (91.5%) deaths were reported from low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), while 83.5% of pediatric population from all included countries were from LMIC. The pediatric deaths/1,000,000 children and case fatality rate (CFR) were significantly higher in LMIC than in high-income countries (HIC) (2.77 in LMIC vs 1.32 in HIC; p < 0.001 and 0.24% in LMIC vs 0.01% in HIC; p < 0.001, respectively). The ICU admission/1,000,000 children was 18.80 and 1.48 in HIC and LMIC, respectively (p < 0.001). The highest deaths/1,000,000 children and CFR were in infants < 1 year old (10.03 and 0.58% in the world, 5.39 and 0.07% in HIC and 10.98 and 1.30% in LMIC, respectively). 

Conclusions: The study highlights that there may be a larger impact of pediatric COVID-19 fatality in LMICs compared to HICs.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0246326
JournalPLOS ONE
Volume16
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 29 Jan 2021
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2021 Kitano et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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