Clinical and epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19 in Pediatrics in Dominican Republic

Introduction: In March, 2020 it was detected an outbreak of the disease caused by the new coronavirus in La Romana, Dominican Republic, from that moment the disease has spreaded quickly trough all the country. Objectives: Describe the clinical and epidemiological manifestations of COVID-19 in patients under 18 years. Methods: There were analyzed the data from the National System of Epidemiological Surveillance. The analysis included the sociodemographic characteristics, clinical manifestations, lethality and mortality rates, geospatial analysis of viral spreading, and epidemic curve. Results: Until July 13th, 2020, it was registered a total of 46 301 cases, 3 009 were pediatric patients (6.4 percent) and of these 2 992 were confirmed with the disease (99.4 percent). The epidemic curve showed a continued transmission pattern and with a common source, with an incidence peak in the epidemiological week number 27. Most of the confirmed cases (50. 7 percent) were females, with a predominance of the one of 9 years old (range 0-17, intercuartilic range 4-14 years) and the 74.0 percent were symptomatic. The most common symptomatology was fever (80,3 percent), cephalalgia (74.5 percent), myalgia (37.1 percent) and respiratory difficulty (7.1 percent). The admittion rate in intensive care units was of < 1 percent and the lethality of 0.2. Conclusions: COVID-19 has spreaded quickly in children of all the country. Although the low lethality, the prevention strategies to flat the contagions curve must be strengthening and in that way it will be possible to decrease the impact in the groups of higher risk(AU)