Most children infected with Covid-19 do better clinically, compared to adults. This is indicated by a 26-country review compiled from 131 studies and published in EClinicalMedicine (June), a journal affiliated with The Lancet.

The largest systematic review to date of children and young adults infected with Covid-19, the review found that 19 percent of children diagnosed with Covid-19 had no symptoms and 21 percent exhibited patchy lesions in lung X-rays. The most frequent symptoms among children, similar to the adult population, were fever and cough.

“Our data is compiled from 131 studies and included 7,780 patients who span the pediatric age spectrum,” says study senior author Alvaro Moreira, assistant professor of pediatrics at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Moreira says that the number of children with excellent outcomes surprised the research team. “Although we are hearing about severe symptoms of the disease in children, this occurs in very rare circumstances,” she says.

The review concluded that only a small number of child patients had multisystem inflammatory syndrome which paralleled the extreme forms of Covid-19 which afflicts adults.