SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Infants Less than 90 Days Old

Abstract

Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre-including this research content-immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

Case report of a neonate with high viral SARSCoV-2 loads and long-term virus shedding

“…The mother had not previously been infected and was not infected by this neonate during the period of viral shedding despite the high viral load. As described in current literature, symptoms of COVID-19 in newborns were mild, or even none with complete recovery; which is consistent in our case report [ 7 , 10 , [16] , [17] , [18] , [19] , [20] , [21] , [22] , [23] , [24] , [25] , [26] , [27] , [28] , [29] , [30] , [31] , [32] , [33] , [34] ]. In most cases, the mother was infected and probably transmitted horizontally to the neonate.…”

“…To our knowledge, there is only one series report about neonates that showed viral loads (Ct values) in neonates. This report included 18 neonates and infants aged between 10-88 days old and showed extremely low values between 3.00-6.58 [ 7 ]. Addiotionally, there are some case reports that report viral shedding in neonates.…”

“…However, little is known about disease severity in neonates, the need for treatment and their role in transmission of SARS-CoV-2 [ 5 ]. It is reported that children or neonates can have high viral loads, while remaining asymptomatic or having mild symptoms [ 6 , 7 ]. However, there is no clear association between the viral load and infectivity.…”

Comparison of Clinical and Epidemiologic Characteristics of Young Febrile Infants with and without Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 Infection

“…6 Since then, a number of case reports and small series describing infants less than 2 months of age have been published, most reporting mild disease, with many infants coming to medical attention due to fever, lethargy and poor feeding, but without respiratory manifestations as seen in adult patients. 7,8,9,10,11,12,13 The largest case series to date describes 18 infants younger than 90 days of age who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, 14 of whom were febrile. 9 The objective of this study was to compare the clinical and demographic characteristics and hospital course of febrile infants who presented to Cohen Children's Medical Center (CCMC) during March and April of 2020, the time period of peak COVID-19 incidence in our region, to febrile infants treated in CCMC during March and April of previous years.…”

Measures to maintain regular operations and prevent outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 in childcare facilities or schools under pandemic conditions and co-circulation of other respiratory pathogens

“… a lower frequency of infection [ 1 ], [ 2 ], [ 3 ], [ 4 ], [ 5 ] (some, but by far not all studies were conducted during the lockdown, which is a methodological limitation); a lower average severity of disease and associated with this; a significantly lower risk of the most serious, including fatal, courses; from CoVID-19 [ 6 ], [ 7 ], [ 8 ], [ 9 ], [ 10 ], [ 11 ], [ 12 ], [ 13 ], [ 14 ], [ 15 ], [ 16 ], [ 17 ], [ 18 ], [ 19 ], [ 20 ], [ 21 ], [ 22 ], [ 23 ], [ 24 ]. …”