No healthy child has died from Covid in UK
NO HEALTHY child has died from Covid-19 in the UK, the biggest study into the disease suggested, as researchers said they were confident sending their own children back to school.
Researchers found that children made up fewer than one per cent of all hospital admissions with Covid-19, and just six youngsters had died overall.
All the deaths occurred in children with major underlying health conditions such as cerebral palsy or cancer.
The study was based on more than 79,000 admissions to hospitals in Britain, around two thirds of all admissions with Covid-19, of which 651 were children. Researchers said the number of child cases and deaths was “staggeringly low” and was likely to be representative of all admissions.
It was seen by Prof Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, before his weekend statement encouraging parents to send children back to school.
It confirms that severe Covid-19 in children is “exceptionally rare” and only occurs in youngsters who already have serious underlying conditions.
In the run-up to its publication in the BMJ, Calum Semple the report’s author, a professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool, said: “We did not have any deaths in otherwise-healthy schoolaged children. Severe disease is rare and death is vanishingly rare. In fact, the deaths that we did observe were in children with profound comorbidities not a touch of asthma, not cystic fibrosis. These children had existing life limiting conditions.
“This is the data which Chris Whitty has been relying on when he says we can be quite sure that Covid in itself is not causing harm to children on a significant scale. I am sending my youngest child back to school.”
The findings showed that children of black ethnicity were three times more likely to suffer severe Covid-19, but researchers said the absolute risk was so low that it made little difference and parents should not be concerned. The study also found there was an increased risk for obese children.