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COVID-19Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 16|pp 19954—19962

COVID-19 mortality rate in children is U-shaped

Nina Khera1,3, Didac Santesmasses2, Csaba Kerepesi2, Vadim N. Gladyshev2
  • 1Buckingham Browne and Nichols School, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
  • 2Division of Genetics, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
  • 3Biotein, Wellesley, MA 02482, USA
Received: April 4, 2021Accepted: August 9, 2021Published: August 18, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203442

Copyright: © 2021 Khera et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Children are known to be better protected from COVID-19 than adults, but their susceptibility patterns and the risk relative to other diseases are insufficiently defined. Here, we found that the COVID-19 mortality rate is U-shaped in childhood: it initially decreases, reaching the minimum at the ages 3-10 years, and then increases throughout life. All-cause mortality and mortality from other diseases, such as pneumonia and influenza, show a similar pattern; however, childhood mortality rates from COVID-19 are considerably lower than from other diseases, with the best relative protection achieved at the youngest ages. Consistent with this, the fraction of COVID-19 deaths among all deaths increases as a function of age throughout childhood and the entire life. We discuss implications of the elevated postnatal COVID-19 risk and lower childhood COVID-19 mortality compared to other diseases.