The Need to Study Clinical Outcomes in Children and Adolescents With COVID-19 From Middle- and Low-Income Regions

Abstract

portion of infants who met the cutoffs for delay, which Springer considered to be more appropriate, demonstrated a statistically significant difference only with respect to the gross motor subdomain. Importantly, this does not detract from the differences on the continuous fine motor and personal-social scores. Gross motor skills develop at an earlier age than fine motor and personal-social skills; therefore, greater variability is expected in this domain at this age. Finally, decrements in gross motor skills are one of the earliest indicators of risk for autism spectrum disorder. Given the lack of autism spectrum disorder screening and diagnostic tools at this early age, decrements in gross motor skills may be particularly meaningful.We encourage readers to interpret our preliminary report 1 as one would a screener-there is an early indication of potential developmental differences in infants born during the COVID-19 pandemic that should be carefully monitored. Given the small sample size, it is critical not only to replicate our findings, but also to expand on them using objective assessments of neurodevelopment, which we are actively pursuing as part of the longitudinal COVID-19 Mother Baby Outcomes (COMBO) Initiative. While acknowledging the limitations of our analysis, we have a responsibility to disseminate the preliminary results of our study in an effort to shed light on how the COVID-19 pandemic may be impacting infants born during this unprecedented time.

Effectiveness of BNT162b2 and CoronaVac vaccines against omicron in children aged 5 to 11 years

“…Nonetheless, despite the low precision of estimates (with wide 95% CIs) derived from the relatively small size of the sample, with few fully vaccinated children and a small number of severe events, our findings highlight the importance of evaluating vaccine performance in many different subgroups and regions [31][32][33]. Moreover, a cost-effective vaccination program for children from poor regions to prevent COVID-19 and severe illness is an urgent public health need since the reported clinical outcomes of COVID-19 in children from developing countries are quite diverse from those of developed countries [34]. While studies from developed regions have reported an overall mortality rate of 1% or lower in hospitalized children [35], data from low-income regions showed a death rate of about 7% in this age group [16,17,36].…”

Vaccine Effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 Variants in Adolescents from 15 to 90 Days after Second Dose: A Population-Based Test-Negative Case-Control Study

“…However, data from low-income regions are quite diverse from findings of high-income countries that reported an overall mortality rate of 1% or even less in hospitalized pediatric patients 20 . data from Brazil and Africa showed, respectively, an overall mortality rate of 7.7% (1661/21591) and 8.3% (39/469) in pediatric patients hospitalized with COVID-19 13 , 14 , 21 , 22 . These findings have clinical and public health implications and the implementation of an efficacious vaccination program is urgently needed for children and adolescents in low-income regions 23 .…”