This was a hard topic to write about. New research led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and involving physicians in 45 countries has found that children with cancer are at a higher risk of severe illness and death should they contract Covid-19. Notably, children in low-middle income and middle-high income countries were significantly more likely to have severe outcomes than children in high-income countries. I was lucky to interview two excellent physicians for this article - from St. Jude - first author of the study, Dr. Sheena Mukkada and from The Medical Center, Kolkata, India - Dr. Arpita Bhattacharyya, who contributed patient data to the registry and provided insight about the experience of the pandemic at her center.
A few points:
- 20% of children with cancer experienced severe Covid-19 infection, much higher than even the highest estimates in the pediatric population generally.
- 1 in 25 children with cancer infected with Covid-19 worldwide died.
And of course there is much that the registry cannot capture. I'll leave you with these quotes from Dr. Bhattacharyya talking about the early stage of the pandemic where India instigated strict quarantine regulations to try to control the virus:
“When we suspected leukemia or a solid tumor, and the child tested positive for COVID-19, we couldn’t do anything about it for 17 days; no further tests to confirm the diagnosis and no treatment,” Dr Bhattacharyya explained. “A child who would have been diagnosed in less than 24 hours had to come back after weeks, and, in some cases, the disease progressed. And a lot of children, unfortunately, never came back. It was one of the greatest feelings of helplessness that we have encountered.”