Children and young people at risk of severe illness from SARS-CoV-2
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Risk factors for intensive care admission and death amongst children and young people admitted with COVID-19 and PIMS-TS in England
IRAS ID
294268
Contact name
Russell Viner
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
This project aims to investigate direct impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on health outcomes amongst children and young people (CYP) in England.
The aims of the study are:
(1) To identify which CYP are at risk of severe illness or death following SARS-CoV-2 infection
Identifying which CYP are clinically extremely vulnerable to severe disease following SARS-CoV-2 infection is important to guide shielding policy and vaccine prioritisation.
We will explore this through examining routinely collected hospital administrative data (Secondary Uses Service (SUS)) held by NHS England. These data are available for all admissions in 0-17 year olds in England. These data have been linked to the following datasets by NHS England as part of ongoing health service evaluation work commissioned by the department for the Chief Medical Officer: The Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet), the National Child Mortality Database (NCMD), SARS-CoV-2 testing data provided by Public Health England (PHE).
We will use these linked datasets to analyse clinical outcomes amongst CYP who have been admitted with COVID-19 or Paediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome Temporally Associated with COVID-19 (PIMS-TS). The outcomes of interest will be paediatric intensive care admission, length of hospital stay, and death. We will compare the odds of each clinical outcome by socioeconomic characteristics, and the presence of co-morbidities within CYP. In this way we will be able to identify which characteristics (age, sex, ethnicity, level of deprivation and co-morbidities) are associated with severe disease.
The partnership between UCL, NHSE, and PHE will allow our study to have rapid and meaningful impact in informing major policy decisions around shielding and vaccination of CYP.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - South Yorkshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/YH/0127
Date of REC Opinion
10 Jun 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion