Clinical Profile of Child COVID-19 Patients of Bangladesh

Abstract

Background: Millions of people worldwide have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the prevalence of malnutrition, refusal of immunization during a pandemic, nutritional anemia, air pollution, poverty, poor parental education, inadequate access to high-quality acute healthcare, the clinical characteristics and outcomes of children in Bangladesh may vary from other countries. Information on clinical presentations, outcomes, the relationship between disease incidence and the prevalence of associated disease in Bangladeshi children affected by COVID-19 are scarce. Objective: In this study, our main goal was to evaluate the clinical profile of pediatric COVID-19 patients in child corona unit of Dhaka Medical College Hospital, Bangladesh. Method: This single center observational study was conducted in Child Corona Unit of Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH). A total of 1020 COVID-19 positive pediatric patients were included in this study. Results: In our study, 89.1% of patients had fever, 80.8% had a cough, 23.1% had diarrhea, and 70.8% had myalgia. According to CXR reports, 2.1% patients had ground-glass opacity, 38% had local patchy shadowing, 31.8% patients had bilateral patchy shadowing and 27.9% patients had interstitial abnormalities. Correlation of disease severity between without co-morbidity and with co-morbidity is statistically significant (p=0.01). Conclusion: This research revealed a variable range of presentations. This sheds light on the cases of COVID-19 in the pediatric population. Children with COVID-19 normally present with or are asymptomatic with different symptoms; infants may have a high risk of serious illness. However, most cases were reported in children 11-15 years of age and fever, cough, nasal congestion and dyspnoea were typical symptoms. Serious cases were those with co-morbidity and in order to save them additional attention during home care and prompt hospitalization therapy are needed.