Unprecedented in its scale – more than 270,000 new cases detected on January 4 – the wave carried by the Delta and Omicron variants does not spare children. At least 180,000 of them were diagnosed positive for SARS-CoV-2 in the last week of December. According to statistics from Public Health France (SPF), on the eve of the start of the school year, there were 48,500 high school students (15-17 years), 56,000 secondary school students (11-14 years), 60,000 schoolchildren (6-10 years) and 15,500 kindergarten students (3-5 years) diagnosed positive. More spared during the previous waves, the little French people now appear on the front line in the face of the virus, while the vaccination for 5-11 was only opened on December 22, 2021.
“For me, a child in the hospital is already a lot, 60 children in intensive care for an infectious disease, it is already enormous, launched the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, to the deputies, Tuesday, within the framework of the discussions on the establishment of the vaccine pass. The epidemic dynamic, even if it is less impressive in numbers than for adults, continues to increase. The risks for a child to present a severe form are very low, but there are some ”, he added.
Over 800 PIMS in France
Severe cases remain rare in children, but with the surge in the number of cases, hospitalizations are on the increase. As of January 4, 284 children under 10, as well as 180 children and adolescents between 10 and 19 years old were hospitalized with a Covid-19 diagnosis. They were 78 and 54 respectively a month earlier, with an acceleration since the last days of December 2021. “Some are hospitalized for causes other than Covid-19 and the diagnosis is fortuitous”, relativizes François Angoulvant, pediatrician at Robert-Debré hospital in Paris, who estimates these incident cases at around 20%. “Hospitalizations for Covid are much lower than for influenza or bronchiolitis”, he adds, specifying that these winter illnesses are the cause of several thousand hospitalizations each year.
Serious cases, which sometimes require intensive care, are most linked to a complication called “pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome” or PIMS: more than 800 have been identified in France since the start of the epidemic. “Omicron remains a big unknown. We do not really know what this will give, because we do not yet have enough hindsight and data on PIMS in children ”, observes François Angoulvant.
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