Retrospective Analysis of Clinical Characteristics and Disease Outcomes in Children and Adolescents Hospitalized Due to COVID-19 Infection in Tunisia

• Published in: Viruses 2024-05, Vol.16 (5), p.779
• Main Authors: Borgi, Aida, Meftah, Khaoula, Trabelsi, Ines, Kyaw, Moe H, Zaghden, Hela, Bouafsoun, Aida, Mezghani, Fatma, Missaoui, Nada, Abdel Ali, Alya, Essaddam, Leila, Khemiri, Haifa, Haddad-Boubaker, Sondes, Boussetta, Khedija, Khemiri, Monia, Ben Becher, Saida, Boukthir, Samir, Triki, Henda, Menif, Khaled, Smaoui, Hanen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Child; Child, Preschool; Children; clinical characteristics; Communicable diseases; comorbidities; Comorbidity; Coronaviruses; Cough; COVID-19; COVID-19 - epidemiology; COVID-19 - mortality; COVID-19 - virology; COVID-19 vaccines; disease severity; Diseases; Dyspnea; Fatalities; Female; Hospitalization - statistics & numerical data; Humans; Immunization; Incidence; Infant; Infant, Newborn; Infants; Male; Medical research; Medicine, Experimental; Mortality; Neurological diseases; observational study; Patient outcomes; Patients; pediatric population; Pediatrics; Pharmaceutical industry; Population studies; Respiration; Retrospective Studies; SARS-CoV-2 - genetics; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; Tunisia - epidemiology
• ISSN: 1999-4915; 1999-4915
• DOI: 10.3390/v16050779

Due to low susceptibility of coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) in children, limited studies are available regarding COVID-19 in the pediatric population in Tunisia. The current study evaluated the incidence, clinical characteristics, and outcomes of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection among children hospitalized at Béchir Hamza Children's Hospital. A retrospective cohort analysis was conducted using the hospital database between March 2020 and February 2022 with children aged ≤15 years with SARS-CoV-2 infection (confirmed by RT-PCR). A total of 327 COVID-19 hospitalized patients with a mean age of 3.3 years were included; the majority were male. Neurological disease (20%) was the most common comorbidity, while fever (95.3%) followed by cough (43.7%) and dyspnea (39.6%) were the most frequent symptoms reported. Severe disease with oxygen requirement occurred in 30% of the patients; 13% were admitted in the Intensive Care Unit. The overall incidence rate of COVID-19 hospitalization (in Tunis governorates) was 77.02 per 100,000 while the inpatient case fatality rate was 5% in the study population. The most prevalent circulating variant during our study period was Delta (48.8%), followed by Omicron (26%). More than 45% of the study population were