Simona Nikolaičiukaitė¹, Agnė Matulevičiūtė¹, Gerda Želvytė¹

¹Medical Academy, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania

Abstract

The Covid-19 infection began in mid-December 2019 and continues to this day and has become one of the most memorable pandemics in health history. The growing number of infected children has also risen exponentially. However, children, unlike adults, get the infection more easily and for a shorter time. Virus spread methods are air droplet and contact. Children are usually not primary carriers of the infection, but only secondary individuals infected from an adult at home, kindergarten or school, and other settings. Main clinical signs in the pediatric population remain fever and cough, but some of those infected are asymptomatic carriers of the virus. Children have also non-specific signs such as excretion of viral RNA in the faeces. The diagnosis of Covid-19 infection is an upper respiratory PCR test, a radiological examination of children is used in rare cases and is required individually for a real patient and in presence of symptoms. This article reviews main characteristics of Covid-19 infection in children.

Keywords: children, COVID‐19,  SARS‐CoV‐2, characteristics, epidemiology, clinic, diagnosis, treatment.