Prevalence of Asthma in Hospitalized and Non-Hospitalized Children with COVID-19
Although initial reports of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) showed limited and nonsevere manifestations in children, more recent reports have begun to describe more serious illness in children, including patient characteristics associated with hospitalization and death. During the early stages of the pandemic, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed moderate-to-severe asthma as a potential risk factor for severe COVID-19, yet there is little data to support this assertion in children and published data in adults are conflicting. The largest cohort of pediatric COVID-19–positive patients in the United States included only descriptive statistics on underlying conditions and severity and did not delineate diagnosis-specific associations with hospitalization.6 To help address these gaps in knowledge, we completed a retrospective cohort study in a large pediatric cohort of patients with polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-confirmed COVID-19 to determine the association between current asthma and hospitalization.