COVID-19 infection in children
Infections with coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that appeared in December 2019
(COVID-19) in China have become a global public health threat worldwide
(Rothan & Byrareddy, 2020). COVID-19
targets the lower respiratory airway causing severe acute syndrome
resulting in increasing death cases among people. The epidemiological
reports shown that the death cases of COVID-19 infection are higher in
healthy or older adults compared to children. A study showed that among
44,672 COVID-19 confirmed cases, 549 (1.2%) were between 10–19 years,
and 416 (0.9%) were between 0–10 years
(Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Emergency
Response Epidemiology, 2020). About 4% of children were asymptomatic,
51% had a mild illness, and 39% had a moderate illness. Another study
showed that the percentage of severe COVID-19 infection among children
was 6% compared to 18.5% of adults(Dong
et al., 2020). Generally, infected children show milder to asymptomatic
COVID-19 infection. Adults with severe COVID-19 suffer from deadly
pneumonia and insufficient supply of oxygen throughout the body,
probably due to disruption of hemoglobin by SARS-CoV-2 as reported by
several frontline clinicians from New York City; on the other hand,
clinical reports showed the children are insusceptible to pneumonia
caused by COVID-19 infection (2020;
Huang et al., 2020;
Li et al., 2020;
Lippi & Mattiuzzi, 2020;
Wang et al., 2020a). With the help of
in-silico molecular modeling and docking analysis, it is predicted that
Orf1ab, ORF10, and ORF3a proteins of SARS-CoV-2 binds with the heme of
the beta chain of hemoglobin resulting in dissociation of iron from the
porphyrin ring such studies still need further in vitro and in vivo
investigations. The considerable variation in COVID-19 infection between
children and adults raises a question that could help to understand the
mechanism of COVID- 19 pathogenesis.