COVID-19 in Hospitalised Children and Adolescents: Review of the First Pandemic Year at Vilnius University Hospital Santaros Klinikos

Abstract

Summary. Background. Since the start of the pandemic with SARS-CoV-2 virus, very little data was known about clinical features and outcomes of COVID-19 in children and adolescents not only in Lithuania, but also in other European countries. This study was started in collaboration with 82 participating healthcare institu-tions across 25 European countries, using a well-established research network—the Paediatric Tuberculosis Network European Trials Group (ptbnet). This multinational, multicentre cohort study was performed during the first wave of the pandemic, between April 1 and April 24, 2020. Each participating country was allowed to continue further research individually encompassing brighter time limits and using the same methodol-ogy. We present here data of children hospitalised at Vilnius University Hospital Santaros Klinikos (VUH SK) during the first year of the pandemic. Materials and methods. We included all paediatric patients with PCR confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection who were hospitalised at VUH SK. The study was performed between March 12, 2020 and March 12, 2021. A standardised data collection spreadsheet was used to record epidemiological, clinical and treatment data.