COVID-19 trends and severity among symptomatic children aged 0 to 17 years in ten EU countries, 3 August 2020 to 3 October 2021 (preprint)

To guide evidence-based prevention of COVID-19 in children, we estimated risks of severe outcomes in 820,404 symptomatic paediatric cases reported by 10 EU Member States between August 2020 and October 2021. Case and hospitalisation rates rose as overall transmission increased but severe outcomes were rare: 9,611 (1.2%) were hospitalised, 640 (0.08%) required intensive care and 84 (0.01%) died. Despite increased individual risk (aOR; 95% CI for hospitalisation: 7.3; 3.3 - 16.2, ICU: 8.7; 6.2 - 12.3) in cases with comorbidities such as cancer, diabetes, cardiac or lung disease, most (83.7%) hospitalised children had no reported comorbidity.