Hospitals in SP record high number of visits to children with Covid

As the omicron variant advances in the country, public and private hospitals are already registering an increase in diagnoses and care for children with Covid, in addition to a slight upward trend in hospitalizations. This reinforces the need to vaccinate this public as soon as possible, according to experts.

This Wednesday (5), the Ministry of Health defined that children from 5 to 11 years old will receive the Pfizer vaccine for Covid-19 without having to present a medical prescription. Vaccination in this age group will not be mandatory and should start later this month.

The fear of experts is that Brazil faces a situation similar to that of the United States, which accounts for the highest number of hospitalizations of children with Covid since the beginning of the pandemic. There were more than 325,000 new cases last week, up 64% from the previous week.

Due to the blackout of data in the official notification system of the Ministry of Health and underreporting of cases from states and municipalities, there is no national data on the high of Covid in children, but it is already noticed in hospitals and medical offices.

At the Hospital Infantil Sabará, in the capital of São Paulo, care for children up to ten years of age with Covid began to increase from epidemiological week 50 (from December 12 to 18). The number jumped from one case a week to 15 in the next two weeks.

The positivity rate in Covid tests in the same period went from 2% to 20%. On Wednesday (5), four children were hospitalized with Covid – at week 50, there was one.

At Hospital Albert Einstein, the rate of positive tests for Covid in children went from 8.6% in the week of Christmas to 29% this week. This Wednesday (5), only one child was hospitalized with Covid.

At Hospital Sírio-Libanês, the positivity rate in Covid exams tripled between the beginning of December and the beginning of January: from 7% to 21.4%. Two children are hospitalized.

In the public network, three children’s hospitals in the capital of São Paulo – Cândido Fontoura, Darcy Vargas and Menino Jesus – register an upward trend in the occupation of beds for Covid.

They went from 29 hospitalizations, in mid-December, to 40 this Wednesday (5), according to an analysis by Infotracker, a project by USP and Unifesp that monitors the pandemic in the state.

In a note, the Municipal Health Department informs that, in the last five epidemiological weeks, 33 cases of Srag (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) by Covid in children were recorded throughout the city of São Paulo, but does not specify the evolution of these numbers.

At the largest children’s hospital in the SUS, Pequeno Príncipe, which is located in Curitiba (PR), the state deserves attention. The number of confirmed cases has tripled in the last month. There were four cases between December 1st and 4th against 12 in the same period this month.

Between December 10 and January 2, the institution had not admitted any child for Covid. On the last Monday (3), there were two (an eight-year-old and a ten-month-old baby).

According to Renato Kfouri, infectious disease specialist, pediatrician and director of SBIm (Brazilian Society of Immunizations), the increase in Covid cases by the omicron variant has been observed at all ages, but tends to increase more, proportionally and in absolute numbers, among populations. unvaccinated, in the case of children in Brazil.

“It’s the phenomenon of proportional deviation. We started by vaccinating the elderly [e os casos de Covid caíram nessa população], then the virus started to catch more young adults and, now, the natural deviation is to catch unvaccinated children”, he explains.

He says that in the United States, children and adolescents under the age of 18 accounted for less than 1% of those infected at the beginning of the pandemic. Now it’s 23%. There have been 1,045 deaths in this age group from Covid since the beginning of the pandemic. In Brazil, there are 2,178 deaths under the age of 18.

“Children rarely need to be hospitalized for Covid, but 1% of 100,000 cases, out of 1 million cases, is a lot of children hospitalized. In the United States, everyone is very worried. And here it’s the same thing. blindly with official data, but sees this increase in offices and emergency rooms.”

According to Wallace Casaca, coordinator of Infotracker, with the blackout of data on hospitalizations for Covid and the lack of testing, it is very difficult to know the real dimension of infected and hospitalized children.

“They say it’s all flu, taking it with the belly, when we know, from the experience of other countries, that the magnitude of Covid by the omicron tends to be much greater and children will be greatly affected.”

In Sírio-Libanês, of the 210 children with flu-like symptoms who went to the emergency room in the first four days of the year, 21.4% had Covid.

According to pediatrician Ricardo Fonseca, pediatric coordinator of Sírio, the most frequent symptoms are respiratory, such as runny nose, cough and sore throat, but there are also many children with gastrointestinal signs, such as diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

“And it’s getting more and more frequent [o cenário de] only the child, and no one else in the family, will test positive for Covid because the adults are already vaccinated.”

For infectious disease specialist Francisco Ivanildo de Oliveira Junior, quality manager at Sabará, the scenario reinforces the need for the vaccination of children between 5 and 11 years old to start as soon as possible in the country.

“If, instead of carrying out a public consultation and hearing, the Ministry had gone back to import the vaccine from the moment it was released by Anvisa, we could have started the vaccination this week. And we would have had a large part of the child population already with both back-to-school doses in February.”

He says that, due to this delay, most children will return to classrooms with only one dose or none, since there will be a stratification by risk group for vaccine application.

According to the Ministry of Health, immunization will begin in indigenous children, quilombolas, with comorbidities and permanent disabilities. The government expects to receive 3.7 million pediatric doses from Pfizer by the end of January, which will be distributed proportionally to the states and the Federal District.

By March, the ministry expects at least 20 million doses, enough to immunize about half of the population of children aged 5 to 11 years.

“Vaccinating children at this time is important not only for them, since the effectiveness and safety are very well demonstrated and the benefits for reducing hospitalization and deaths are unquestionable, but also from an epidemiological point of view, to help control the disease. pandemic”, says infectologist Oliveira Júnior.

Ricardo Fonseca, who also coordinates the Sírio-Libanês school health program, reinforces that preventive care for the return to school will be the same.

“We are going to start the school year with the same measures as last year. Use of masks, hygiene, ventilated environments and removal of symptoms.”