COVID19: Children admitted to Makarios Hospital doubles

The number of children treated for COVID-19 at Nicosia’s specialist Makarios Hospital has doubled in the past fortnight, according to the director of its paediatric ward Dr Avraam Elia.

In comments to the Cyprus News Agency on Friday, the head of the children’s ward said that one in three children currently being treated at the hospital has Covid-19.

Elia said the number of child patients with COVID-19 has dramatically increased in the past 15 days.

“We are currently in a period with the highest number of children admitted to hospital with coronavirus. On Friday, we have 10 children, yesterday we had eleven.”

Thursday’s 11 hospitalisations were the highest number of child patients with COVID-19 treated simultaneously since the pandemic outbreak in March 2020.

Two weeks ago, as the doctor noted, there were about five children with coronavirus in the hospital, which has effectively doubled.

“We usually treat infants and children under five even though we have older children too.

“Usually, it is the small children who have high temperature, loss of appetite, indisposition; some children may also present febrile seizures and need to be admitted to hospital.”

The rise in children hospitalisations comes as an Omicron powered surge of infections has stubbornly kept daily cases above 3,000.

Dr Elia said that Omicron had been detected in six of 21 samples according to sample sequencing. Four concerned infants.

The head of the Makarios Hospital children’s ward said children with coronavirus are only admitted to the hospital if they present symptoms such as high temperature, or if they are babies with loss of appetite, dehydration and gastrointestinal disorders or older children with persistent fever, breathing difficulties or chest pains.

According to the latest epidemiological report, one-fifth of reported cases were children and teenagers up to 19.