COVID-19 appears to generally cause mild illness in children. Less than 2 in every 100 cases diagnosed in China have been in children and infection appears to be milder in children than it is in adults, although we do not yet understand exactly why this is the case.
However, at this time, when everyone is preoccupied with COVID-19, it's really important to realise that not every illness your child has is due to COVID-19. All the 'normal' infections that can make children and babies really unwell still remain and there is a major risk that parents may delay bringing their child to the attention of a healthcare professionals even if they are unwell. If you are not sure if your child is unwell and whether they need to be seen by someone, click here to help you decide. GPs and hospitals are still providing the same safe care that they always do for children.
It is important not to panic. Your child is only likely to get infected if they come into close contact with someone with COVID-19 who has symptoms of infection (cough, difficulty in breathing or fever). Close contact is defined as either direct face to face contact or being within 2 metres of that person for 15 minutes or more.
Reassuringly, COVID-19 seems to infect children far less frequently than it does adults. And if children are infected, they generally experience mild illness. So far, most severe cases have been in elderly people with medical conditions such as heart problems or lung disease. Although we do not yet fully understand whether any specific groups of children are at higher risk of severe disease than others, NHS advice is currently that children vulnerable to influenza are also likely to be more vulnerable to COVID-19. However, from what we know so far from China and Italy, there have been extremely few severe cases in children, even those with cancer or weakened immune systems.
For specific information for children and young people with cancer undergoing cancer treatment, click here.
If you are worried about your child's breathing and are not sure if they need to be seen by a healthcare professional, click here to help you decide.
Our local and regional paediatric services are well set up and have detailed plans in place to treat and support all children who have severe COVID-19 disease. There is a national plan in place for children that require intensive care support (PICU).
As of 16/03/2020, the UK government has taken a far more robust approach to reducing the spread of COVID-19, which was made even more stringent on 23/3/20. People should only be leaving their houses for one of four reasons:
If any member of your family develops a fever or persistent cough, then your whole family needs to self-isolate for 14 days. The main reason for this is to protect those most vulnerable to severe COVID-19 from infection. This includes all people over the age of 70 and adults with long-term health problems such as breathing problems, heart problems, chronic kidney or liver disease, those with central nervous system conditions and those with weakened immune systems. This approach is called social distancing and is the most effective way of minimising the impact of this pandemic. For parents, this means trying to minimise the contact that your child/children have with people from vulnerable groups. This is because children may have the infection with almost no symptoms and potentially may infect other people.
Families of the most vulnerable children will be contacted directly and asked to start shielding their child from COVID-19. This is the most drastic form of social distancing and involves staying at home and avoiding any face to face contact with anyone outside of their household unit for at least 12 weeks. For more information about shielding including which patients fall into this extremely vulnerable group, click here.
It is extremely important to realise that not every child with a fever has COVID-19. All the other conditions that can make children unwell are still ongoing during the COVID-19 pandemic. If you are not sure if your child is unwell and whether they need to be seen by someone, take a look at the red / amber / green features below to help you decide.
If your child has any of the following:
You need urgent help:
Go to the nearest A&E department or call 999
Immediately contact your GP and make an appointment for your child to be seen that day face to face.
We recognise that during the current COVID-19 crisis, at peak times, access to a healthcare professional may be delayed. If symptoms persist for 4 hours or more and you have not been able to speak to either a member of staff from your GP practice or to NHS 111 staff, then consider taking them to your nearest ED.
If none of the above features are present
Self Care:
Continue providing your child's care at home. If you are still concerned about your child, call NHS 111 - dial 111.
The discussion about reopening schools has generated much anxiety amongst parents. There is so much conflicting information that parents are finding it really hard to know what the right thing is to do. This is reflected in the findings from a recent survey that suggested that fewer than half of parents would send their child back to school if they had the choice.
So what do we currently know about COVID-19 and children? They definitely get far milder illness than adults. The mortality (death) rate among children is currently estimated to be 0.01% (1 in 10,000 cases), which is similar to the rate for ‘normal’ flu and far lower than a lot of other infections. There is also recent evidence that children are less than half as likely to be infected with COVID-19 compared to adults, although we still don’t know why children are protected from infection. Children also appear to transmit COVID-19 far less readily than adults; there have been no reported COVID-19 outbreaks in nurseries or schools, either in countries like Denmark that reopened their schools over a month ago (15th April), or countries such as Iceland that haven’t closed their schools at all during the pandemic or even from NHS nurseries that have been open for the children of key workers throughout the pandemic.
However, it’s important to accept that we don’t yet have all the answers (especially as we’ve only known about COVID-19 for the past few months) and that whatever we do is an educated guess, based on the scientific data available at the time and from the experiences from other countries; no current approach to reopening nurseries and schools is failsafe. However, based on the data we currently have, we are not expecting that reopening schools will result in a surge of unwell people that will overwhelm NHS services. Most importantly, we need to acknowledge that doing nothing is not a feasible option at this point, especially for the most vulnerable children in society. We currently have over 4.5 million children in the UK living in poverty (over 1 in 3 children). These are the children that have suffered most from lockdown, either from an educational perspective due to less access to home schooling compared to children from better off families, or as a direct impact on their physical or mental wellbeing in households with domestic abuse, parental substance misuse or parental mental health issues. These issues have worsened over the period of lockdown and have widened the inequality gap. Keeping schools closed will worsen social mobility and the future costs to the education system of attempting to rectify this will be substantial. The economic cost of lost income and productivity among parents, many of whom will have had to work less in order to provide childcare and home-schooling also falls disproportionately on lower-income families, where parents are less likely to have jobs that allow them to work from home in flexible ways.
The NHS changed its way of working overnight and schools are doing the same in order to keep teachers and children safe. Parents need to make sure that social distancing rules are maintained at drop-off and pick-up times. And we need to keep protecting those at highest risk of severe infection – the elderly should not be in contact with others at this point. And the government has hugely increased testing capability over the past month to allow symptomatic children to be tested rapidly to limit onward transmission to others. So if we do observe an unacceptable rise in cases in schools, we can simply reverse any changes we have made.
One size doesn’t fit all - there are obviously children who will be unable to return to school when they reopen; those being shielded or living in families where other individuals are shielding. These children may need to remain at home until either an effective vaccine has been developed or an effective treatment is found. However, this group make up a very small proportion of the 12.5 million children under the age of 16 in the UK.
So when it comes to making the decision about whether to send your child back to school, you need to not only think about the potential risk to your child and family if they do attend school, but just as importantly, the very real harm resulting from children not returning to school, both for your own child and for children across our wider society.
The Children's Commissioner for England, whose job is to promote and protect children's rights, has written about this in more detail here.
A number of you may have seen recent reports about a inflammatory condition that appears to be affecting children. These cases started occurring about 4 weeks after the sharp rise in COVID-cases in the UK and have predominantly occurred in London so far. It is still unclear whether this is caused by COVID-19 or simply coincidental, however the majority of these cases have evidence of previous COVID-19 infection, making an immune-mediated cause most likely. Urgent research is being conducted by doctors across the UK to clarify this.
Unsurprisingly, these reports have generated a huge amount of anxiety for parents. Although data is still being collected by doctors across the country, so far only an extremely small number of children have developed this syndrome; out of the 12.5 million children aged under 16 years in the UK, less than a hundred have been critically unwell requiring admission to an intensive care unit. These children have presented with features that look like sepsis. This condition has been successfully treated in the vast majority of these cases. It appears likely that a slightly larger number of children have experienced a milder form of this condition, ranging from unusual rashes to prolonged fevers, most of whom have improved without any specific treatment. However, if your child develops fever for more than 5 days, you should call NHS 111 or your GP.
It is important that clinicians are made aware of any potential emerging links so that they are able to give children and young people the right care fast. The advice to parents remains the same: COVID-19 is extremely unlikely to make your child unwell; if you are worried about them, take a look at the red/amber/green symptom guide and if required, contact NHS 111 or your family doctor for urgent advice, or 999 in an emergency, and if a professional tells you to go to hospital, please go to hospital.
In the same way that we have all been talking constantly about COVID-19 over the past few weeks, so have our children.
Many of them (especially those with other underlying health conditions such as heart and lung problems, weakened immune systems or diabetes) are really scared that they will get extremely unwell or even die from COVID-19.
They need you to make time for them and listen to their concerns and reassure them. You need to explain to them that they are extremely unlikely to get unwell from the infection. As you can see from the following diagram, the people most at risk from severe COVID-19 are the elderly; of the 250,000 deaths across the world from COVID-19 (updated 4/5/20), extremely few have been in children. Of the 3.5 million people diagnosed with COVID-19 across the world, less than 2% of infections had occurred in children. And 8 out of 10 people who get COVID-19 only experience mild symptoms.
And of the adults that have died, you can see from the picture below that it's those with multiple health problems involving various body systems that are most at risk.
Primary school children
The World Health Organisation have produced a free book for primary school children called “My Hero is You, How kids can fight COVID-19!” which explains how children can protect themselves, their families and friends from coronavirus and how to manage difficult emotions when confronted with a new and rapidly changing reality. Staff from Southampton Children's Hospital have also written a brilliant free book about COVID-19 for primary school children - click here to read it with your child.
You can also listen to Dr Ranj answering questions posed by children about COVID-19
Secondary school children
The Children's Commissioner for England has produced. resources on COVID-19 for secondary school children - click here.
For more information about supporting your child/children during the COVID-19 pandemic, click here.
COVID-19 is spread by droplets. That means your child needs to be in extremely close contact with someone with COVID-19 (who is coughing) to become infected (within 1-2 metres of them). However, the droplets containing COVID-19 can survive for hours on hard surfaces (door handles, handrails etc). This means that your child is much more likely to get infected by picking up COVID-19 on their hands and then infecting themselves by touching their face (which allows the virus to enter via their mouth, nose or eyes).
This is why washing hands with soap and water is so important, especially after being in areas containing other people:
In addition, trying to stop your child touching their face (unless they have just washed their hands) will also reduce the risk of them getting infected:
For more information about reducing the risk of you or your child catching COVID-19, click here.
Specific groups of children who are at the highest risk of severe infection need to be shielded from others for at least the next 12 weeks to minimise the risk of them getting infected. Children that fall into this group are:
If you are not sure whether your child falls into this category, contact their consultant or specialist nurse who should be able to offer advice.
Face masks should NOT be used for babies and children under 2
Wearing a face mask in this age group can out babies and children at serious risk of harm or death:
There is no evidence showing that ibuprofen is associated with harm in children with COVID-19. If your child has symptoms of COVID-19 such as fever and headache, you can treat your child with either paracetamol or ibuprofen.
Click here to watch a video of some really useful practical tips about looking after a children with presumed COVID-19 and click here for more information if you or other family members become unwell with COVID-19.
1) The reason that you've been brought to the hospital is that you've become poorly and are finding it hard to breath. If you're so poorly that you need to stay in the hospital (be admitted), we will test you for COVID-19. COVID-19 is a tiny germ (virus) that so small that you can't see it. We don't think that it will make you very poorly but we don't want it to spread to other people
2) Although the people doing the testing look scary, they are just normal people underneath the funny mask and clothes:
3) They will gently swab your nose and throat. It might feel a little uncomfortable but it won't hurt. You usually won't require any blood tests.
4) Once you've been tested, you will be looked after in the hospital. It might take 2-3 days for the test result to come back. You may be in hospital for some or even all of that time (or even longer if you're still finding it hard to breath).
When you're allowed to go home, it's really important that you regularly wash your hands and make sure you cover your mouth when you cough and nose when you sneeze - and throw the tissues straight in the bin afterwards.
Your baby should have had a routine physical examination at 6 to 8 weeks, usually by your GP. As you know, COVID-19 has placed a huge challenge on the on the NHS and, if this screening opportunity has been missed due to current circumstance, here is some advice about what you should look out for.
Your baby should have had a full physical examination soon after birth. This will have picked up many, but not all, of the problems which we look for during the 6-week postnatal check.
If your baby does not have a 6-8 week check, you should ask yourself the following questions. If the answer to any is “yes”, you should contact your health visitor or GP.
Eyes
Hips
The routine 6-8 week review is also an opportunity for you to talk to your health visitor about any other issues you may have with your baby and to talk about how you are feeling. Further information regarding the 6-week postnatal review can be found on the NHS website.
VACCINATIONS
COVID-19 has shown how important it is to protect ourselves against infections. Vaccinations are by far the most effective way of achieving this. That’s why is so important that your child still receives their normal childhood vaccinations; to protect them not just during the COVID-pandemic but also for the rest of their lives. Make sure that your child doesn’t miss out - your GP practice is still open to administer them. Click here for more information.
