In the second half of January, over 800 children with Covid-19 under 10 years old were admitted to hospital in Belgium, much more compared to the number of hospitalisations in other age groups.
Between 17 and 30 January, 823 children aged between 0 and 11 were admitted to hospital for Covid-19. This only corresponds to 0.8% of infected children in that age group, but is still higher than just 0.1% of infected 12- to 17-year-olds and 0.3% of infected 18- to 64-year-olds who are hospitalised, show Sciensano figures reported by De Standaard.
"The picture is very diverse. We mainly see children with flu-like symptoms such as headaches and stomach aches," Isabelle Meyts, paediatric immunologist at the UZ Leuven, said on Flemish radio on Monday.
"There are also children who are already being treated for another condition and are extra sensitive when they contract coronavirus," she added.
Often a precaution
Meyts emphasised that the general view that children do not get as sick as adults do still remains valid. While children can become severely ill too, it remains very rare. "It is important to seek help if the symptoms do not improve."
In general, young children are often admitted as a precaution, virologist Steven Van Gucht told De Standaard. "They suffer from a high fever or violent cough and can usually leave the hospital after a few days. Severe complications are fortunately rare."
The figures seem to confirm that, as the youngest children are still less represented in intensive care: 16 children (4%) were admitted to ICU over the past two weeks, compared to 163 patients between 18 and 64 (39%) and 189 between 65 and 84 (45%).
Why more children end up in hospital now than during other waves is still unclear, Meyts said. She added that it is too early to say if it has to do with whether or not these young children were vaccinated.
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While the 16 children in ICU were all unvaccinated, virologist Marc Van Ranst told the newspaper that no firm conclusions can be drawn from this figure. "Children up to five years old are not vaccinated, and up to 12, it is only a minority. So it is very difficult to estimate the exact relationship between those admissions and the vaccination coverage."
Still, with the increasing number of infections among young children, Belgium is following the trend in other countries and cities like New York, the United Kingdom and South Africa.
"In these countries, they see that Omicron affects children more than the Delta variant, when the latter was dominant. Omicron is also much more infectious and circulates more easily. The infections happen everywhere, including at school and in the nursery," Van Ranst said.
"But the expectation is that the number of infections and therefore the number of admissions in young children will fall again, once they fall in the population as a whole," he added.
