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TUESDAY, Aug. 25, 2020 (HealthDay News) — The pooled prevalence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV02) in asymptomatic children is 0.65 percent and is significantly associated with the incidence of COVID-19 in the general population, according to a research letter published online Aug. 25 in JAMA Pediatrics<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Ana Marija Sola, from the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, and colleagues examined the prevalence of positive SARS-CoV-2 test results in children who were tested, but not because of suspicion for COVID-19 infection, at 28 children’s hospitals across the United States. SARS-CoV-2 RNA testing was performed before surgery, clinic visits, or hospital admission for children.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that through May 29, 2020, 250 of 33,041 children without symptoms who were tested at 28 hospitals were positive for SARS-CoV-2. The prevalence varied from 0 to 2.2 percent across the 25 combined statistical areas represented by these children’s hospitals, with a pooled prevalence of 0.65 percent. There was a significant association seen for asymptomatic pediatric prevalence with the weekly incidence of COVID-19 in the general population. In individuals without symptoms, no other factor (combined statistical area population, number of tests performed, region, testing indication, or sample collection site) demonstrated a significant association with prevalence.<\/p>\n
“The strong association between prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in children who are asymptomatic and contemporaneous weekly incidence of COVID-19 in the general population provides a simple means for institutions to estimate local pediatric asymptomatic prevalence from the publicly available Johns Hopkins University database,” the authors write.<\/p>\n