Epidemiological and clinical characteristics analysis of 30 childhood cases with 2019 novel coronavirus infection in Shenzhen/ 中华传染病杂志

Objectives@#To analyze the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of children with 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) infection in Shenzhen.@*Methods@#The data of 30 children diagnosed with 2019-nCoV infection in the Third People’s Hospital of Shenzhen from 16th January 2020 to 9th February 2020were collected.@*Results@#Among the 30 children, 14 were boys and 16 were girls. There were 10 mild cases, 13 common cases and one severe case, and six cases with asymptomatic infection. The age ranged from 7 months to 18 years old with the median age of 7 years old. Twenty out of 30 cases (66.7%) were school children. The common clinical characteristics were fever (30.0%, 9/30) and cough (23.3%, 7/30). The body temperature waved below 37.5 ℃. Mostly the auscultations of the lungs were no rales and there was no extrapulmonary complication. A total number of one case had wheezes and hypoxia, and one case had diarrhea and vomiting. There was no critical and death case. There were 29 cases with travelling experience in Hubei province within two weeks, and 24 cases (80.0%) had relatives (parents or grandparents) diagnosed with 2019-nCoV infection. Elevated white blood cell counts (﹥12×109/L), C reaction protein level, lactate dehydrogenase level and the low proportion of T help cells occurred in three, five, five and three cases, respectively. Some cases were coinfected with human respiratory syncytial virus, mycoplasma pneumonia, human herpesvirus, influenza B virus and rubella virus. The predominant pattern of computed tomography findings of childhood patients with 2019-nCoV infection presented with patchy film and ground-glass opacities in bilateral or unilateral lung. The median time for nucleic acid to turn negative was eight days among the enrolled cases. All the cases were cured and discharged home, and the days in hospital waved from 5 - 16 days (the median time was 12 days).@*Conclusions@#The majority of the childhood cases are the school-age children with family cluster. Most cases present mild and common symptoms with good prognosis. Some patients may be complicated with multiple infections.