A Mini Review on Current Clinical and Research Findings for Children Suffering from COVID-19

Xiao Li; Kun Qian; Ling-ling Xie; Xiu-juan Li; Min Cheng; Li Jiang; Bjoern W. Schuller

Nevertheless, the children, especially infants, who are confirmed with COVID-19 could be an insidious infectious source because of their asymptomatic or mild symptomatic infection due to a weak immune system or their own physical characteristics. A largely asymptomatic infant with COVID-19 with high viral load was reported in Singapore, and this case highlights the difficulties in establishing the true incidence of COVID-19, as asymptomatic individuals may play important roles in human-to-human transmission in the community [13] . A study focused on 24 asymptomatic infections identified that the infection period of asymptomatic patients may be as long as three weeks, and the infected patients may develop into serious diseases [14] . Furthermore, the bad habits of young children such as sucking hands, putting their hands all around and unwilling to wash hands could be important risk factors in contact transmission for children. Thus, it is necessary to guarantee family daily prevention to keep children from COVID-19 infection and assure awareness of the importance of its early diagnosis. Also, during the epidemic period, children's health clinics and vaccination clinics should be reduced reasonably, and parent-child activities, kindergartens, primary schools, and other group activities related to children should be suspended. In clinical case, screening was mostly based on the epidemiological track record. Additional basis were raised body temperature and symptoms of the respiratory tract. For children, it is more important to trace close contact history, and pathogen examination needs to be timely executed along with longitudinal monitoring through viral nucleic acid detection. Further isolation recommendations and ongoing nucleic acid testing are also recommended for discharged patients [14] . Additionally, it appears crucial to follow up with infants'respiratory as well as gastrointestinal symptoms and vital indications steadily, which is the most susceptible population in children, at mild onset that could progress into severe at a later stage [11] .