Epidemiological Characteristics and Clinical Approach of COVID-19 among Children under 18 Years in Iraq

Abstract

Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging, rapidly evolving situation that leads to unprecedented demand for health care services. Objectives: Underscoring the clinical manifestations of SARS-CoV-2 infection in children in Iraq by highlighting a new configuration of health care services without any boundaries in the future provided to pediatric patients via telemedicine. Patients and methods: An ongoing prospective cross-sectional telemedicine-based study with data gathering and analysis of many variables of 62 patients in Iraq via remote consultations between July 2020 and May 2021. Results: The male-to-female sex ratio was 0.8:1. The most frequently observed symptoms in infants less than 1 year of age have been coughing (66.6%) and fever (55.5%). In children aged 1-9 years, fever (61.1%) and rhinorrhea (55.5%) were the most commonly observed symptoms with additional clinical findings, including one case (2.7%) presented with bloody diarrhea and another case (2.7%) presented with chest pain. In children and Adolescents aged 10-<18 years, headache (64.7%) with a significant P-value (0.000) and fever (58.8%) were the most frequently observed symptoms. Only one patient (1.6%) requires hospital admission, and the vast majority of the patients are treated at home (98.4%). Hopefully, the case fatality rate was zero percent. Conclusions: The COVID-19 trajectory in children has a good prognosis, even in cases with underlying chronic diseases, and most of the cases are treated at home using telemedicine-healthcare services.