Deaths in Children and Young People in England Following SARS-CoV-2 Infection
researchsquare.com
researchsquare.com
Deaths in children and young people (CYP) following SARS-CoV-2 infection are rare. Quantifying the risk of mortality is challenging because of high relative prevalence of asymptomatic and non-specific disease manifestations. Therefore, it is important to differentiate between CYP who have died of SARS-CoV-2 and those who have died of an alternative disease process but coincidentally tested positive.
Figure 1 is a flow chart that is pretty illuminating for their methodology. Basically, they took all 3100 under-18 deaths for the time period, then looked at the 61 covid-positive cases and reviewed the files. If Covid wasn't listed as cause of death, they go further in-depth to check for cases where Covid 'clearly' contributed to death. If the case makes it past that check, they rely on 3-person panels of 'consultants' for a majority conclusion, repeated until one is reached for each case. If the panel doesn't conclude that Covid 'clearly', 'probably', or 'possibly' contributed, they remove that death from the Covid total.
The net effect is that they cut 61 under-18 deaths-while-Covid down to 25 deaths that were at least possibly exacerbated by Covid, giving 99.995% survival rate among Covid-positive under-18s in England.