The first studies published with pediatric cases from China corroborate the impression that children are not as seriously affected as some adult patients, At the same time, children with comorbidities are vulnerable to SARS-CoV-21.2 infection. The reason why most COVID-19 cases in children are less severe than adults is puzzling. This can be related to both exposure and host factors. Children are generally at home and may have relatively fewer opportunities to be exposed to the pathogen and/or sick patients. New and unusual clinical presentations are becoming evident, such as multisystemic inflammatory syndrome in children, where the clinical picture may resemble Kawasaki disease and/or toxic shock. The child, being asymptomatic or having non-specific signs or symptoms, is an entity that facilitates person-to-person contagion. In addition, prevention measures such as the use of masks cannot be applied, especially in children under 1 year of age, plus the fact they can eliminate the virus through the fecal route up to 2 weeks after its presence in the respiratory tract has become negative, which makes the child, especially the infant, a propagator of the disease. Venezuelan situation and specially that of children in general, is much more worrying since, the collapse in health and economics that Venezuela has been through even before the pandemic, social inequalities, the difficulty accessing to health system, the restriction of mobility and scarcity of fuel, limits the diminished population vaccination program, the closure of schools that affects children and especially girls.

References

1. W Liu., et al. “Detection of Covid-19 in Children in Early January 2020 in Wuhan, China”. The New England Journal of Medicine (2020).
2. Corsino Rey Galán., et al. “Infección por coronavirus (COVID-19) in Coronavirus infection (COVID-19)”. Anales de Pediatría (2020).
3. Dong Y., et al. “Epidemiological characteristics of 2143 pediatric patients with 2019 coronavirus disease in China”. Pediatrics (2020).
4. Torres Torretti and O’Ryan Gallardo M. “El COVID-19 y las 3 “P”: Pandemia, Pediatría y su impacto en el País”. Revista Chilena De Pediatría 3 (2020).
5. OPS: indicadores Básicos 2019: Tendencias de la Salud en las Américas (2020).
6. S Bialek., et al. “Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Children. United States, February 12–April 2, 2020”. Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (2020): 1-5.
7. S Jaqueline., et al. “Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Critically Ill. Pediatric Critical Care Medicine”. Pediatric Critical Care Medicine 7 (2020): 662-666.
8. Ministerio del Poder Popular Para la Salud (MPPS), COVID-19, estadísticas nacionales (2020).
9. Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (UCAB)Encuesta Nacional de Condiciones de Vida 2019-2020, Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (2020).
10. Banco Central de Venezuela, Tipo de cambio oficial BCV (2020).
11. Urbina-Medina H. “Análisis de riesgo frente al COVID-19, Consenso Afectación sistémica de la COVID-19 Sociedad Venezolana de Puericultura y Pediatría (2020).

Citation

Citation: Huníades Urbina-Medina. “COVID in Pediatrics and its impact in Venezuela". Acta Scientific Paediatrics 3.11 (2020): 01-94.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Huníades Urbina-Medina. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.