Abstract

COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2, has rapidly progressed globally started from early days of 2020 and was disseminated to 187 countries and territories by April. As of May 3, 2020, COVID-19 has led to a total of 3,507,442 cases and 245,241 related deaths, globally. Turkey, was successful to delay the first COVID-19 case until March 10, yet, case numbers increased fast, reaching to the top 7th rank in the list of countries with the highest case numbers. It is fortunate that the case-fatality ratio was relatively low, with a somewhat stable course around 2.5%. Somewhat stable course of new case numbers, with an apparent decrease through the end of April led to onset of normalization attempts in the country. The future course of the pandemic will be mainly determined by compliance of the general public with personal hygiene, mask use and social distancing. Globally, COVID-19-related morbidity and mortality rates are lower among children than in adults. Underlying mechanisms for this difference has not been clarified, yet, may be linked to lower exposure rates among children, their immune response may be different and/or higher rates of asymptomatic cases may have lower admissions/testing among children. However, it is important to emphasize that children are prone to SARS-CoV-2, too and all relevant preventions should be ensured. This issue should also be considered in evaluating potential risk of infection transfer from asymptomatic youngsters to the elderly and/or to those with chronic diseases. Data on COVID-19-related case numbers and deaths in Turkey have not been published so far for children. This requires urgent consideration for related reporting and novel research activities on health burden of COVID-19 on Turkish children. Success in combating the COVID-19 pandemic requires concurrent efforts for clinical management of patients together with epidemiological studies of available national data and establishment of specific research to provide evidence for national and international preventive interventions. Learnings from this pandemic will provide direct evidence for management of future pandemics, and all related parties should be motivated to prepare detailed reporting of ongoing efforts and their outputs.

Keywords: COVID-19, Child health, Epidemiology, Transmission, Prevention

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Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to cite

1.
Çakır B. COVID-19 and Children: From an Epidemiological Perspective. Turk J Pediatr Dis [Internet]. 2020 Jul. 24 [cited 2025 Aug. 23];14:1-8. Available from: https://turkjpediatrdis.org/article/view/1201