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. 2022 May-Jun;155(5&6):491-495.
doi: 10.4103/ijmr.ijmr_2557_21.

Do children with severe acute respiratory infection need cohorting & isolation before screening for COVID-19?

Rakesh Kumar  1 , Ritesh Ranjan Sah  1 , Anju Gupta  1 , Karthi Nallasamy  1 , Arnab Ghosh  2 , Sanjay Verma  1
Affiliations

Do children with severe acute respiratory infection need cohorting & isolation before screening for COVID-19?

Rakesh Kumar et al. Indian J Med Res. 2022 May-Jun.

Abstract

This retrospective analysis was done to ascertain the SARS-CoV-2-positivity rate in children (0-12 yr) with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) and compare it to those without SARI to determine the need for running a dedicated SARI isolation facility for paediatric COVID-19 care. The case records of 8780 children (0-12 yr) admitted and/or tested for SARS-CoV-2 between June 2020 and May 2021 at a tertiary care centre in north India were analyzed. The overall SARS-CoV-2 reverse transcription (RT)-PCR positivity rate was 3.0 per cent (262/8780). There were 1155 (13.15%) children with SARI. Fifty of these 1155 (4.3%) children with SARI, as against 212 of the 7625 (2.8%) children without SARI, tested positive for COVID-19. The absolute difference in the positivity rate among SARI and non-SARI groups was only 1.54 per cent which translates to cohorting and isolating 65 children with SARI to pick up one extra SARS-CoV-2-positive child (compared to those without SARI). The positive predictive value of SARI as a screening test was 4.3 per cent. Our findings suggest that isolation of children with SARI as a transmission-prevention strategy for COVID-19 may not be required. This is particularly relevant in resource-limited settings.

Keywords: COVID-19; Children; RT-PCR; SARI; SARS-CoV-2; isolation; screening.

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Conflict of interest statement

None

Figures

Figure
Figure
Month-wise distribution of children with and without SARI tested for SARS-CoV-2 and the positivity rate among the two groups. SARI, severe acute respiratory infection.
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