Results:
In Lebanon, by the end of April 2020, a total of 725 COVID-19 cases were confirmed by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction assay (PCR) testing. 64 cases (9%) were below 19 years of age, of which 1% were below 10 years and 8% between 10 and 19 years. The majority were asymptomatic. Nine patients were hospitalized, mostly for observation and isolation with their affected parents. Among the 24 reported mortalities (3.3% of the patients) and the 44 critically ill patients (6.1%), there were no pediatric patients. One patient, a 16-month-old girl, previously healthy, presented with fever and diarrhea but no cough1. She subsequently was found to have bilateral pneumonia. She had a positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR test andStreptococcus pneumoniae bacteremia and recovered within few days on antibiotic therapy. Another patient who tested positive, a 14-year-old girl, was hospitalized for bilateral pneumonia and had to be transferred briefly to the intensive care unit for observation because of accidental hydroxychloroquine overdose.
The reported incidence of pediatric COVID-19 in other Middle Eastern countries is shown in Table 1.