United States (US) paediatric COVID hospitalisations have surged since Delta became predominant, but a new study that offers a first look at the relevant data suggests that fears the variant causes more severe disease are unfounded.
The paper by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also found that between 20 June and 31 July, 2021, unvaccinated adolescents were more than 10 times more likely to be hospitalised than those who were vaccinated.
The health agency analysed hospital records from across an area covering around 10 percent of the US population, between 1 March, 2020 and 14 August, 2021.
This covered the period before the emergence of Delta, the most contagious strain to date, and after it became dominant, from 20 June onwards.
Weekly hospitalisations of children aged 0-17 were at their lowest between 12 June and 3 July, at 0.3 per 100,000, before rising to 1.4 per 100,000 in the week ending 14 August – a 4.7-fold increase.
Paediatric hospitalisations reached their all-time peak of 1.5 per 100,000 in the week leading up to 9 January, when the US experienced its winter wave that was driven by the Alpha variant.
After examining 3,116 hospital records from the period before Delta, and comparing them to 164 records during the Delta period, the percentage of children with severe indicators was found to not differ greatly.
Specifically, the percent of patients admitted to intensive care was 26.5 pre-Delta and 23.2 post; the percent placed on ventilators was 6.1 pre-Delta and 9.8 post; and the percent who died was 0.7 pre-Delta and 1.8 post.
Post-Delta Period
These differences did not rise to the level of statistical significance.
The finding comes with the important caveat that because the number of hospitalisations in the post-Delta period is small, more data will need to accrue for scientists to gain greater confidence about the conclusion.
The study also underscored vaccine effectiveness against paediatric COVID hospitalisation during Delta.
Between 20 June and 31 July, among 68 adolescents hospitalised with COVID-19 whose vaccination status was known, 59 were unvaccinated, five were partly vaccinated, and four were fully vaccinated.
This meant the unvaccinated were 10.1 times more likely to be hospitalised compared to vaccinated. – AFP