Several countries affected by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic recently reported cases of children that were hospitalised in intensive care due to a rare paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome (PIMS). The presenting signs and symptoms are a mix of the ones for Kawasaki disease (KD) and toxic shock syndrome (TSS) and are characterised, among others, by fever, abdominal pain and cardiac involvement. A possible temporal association with SARS-COV-2 infection has been hypothesised because some of the children that were tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection were either positive by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or serology.
This technical report provides a set of interim public health considerations to support EU/EEA public health authorities taking decisions on the administration of COVID-19 vaccines to children aged 5 11 years.
This report covers the events and threats detected by the ECDC epidemic intelligence (EI) team in 2020 and the actions taken in relation to these findings. The objective of EI at ECDC is to rapidly detect and assess public health events of any origin to ensure EU health security as defined in ECDC’s mandate.
The aim of this document is to provide an update on the knowledge surrounding the role of children in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the role of schools in the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing in particular on the experience in EU/EEA countries since the beginning of the pandemic. This document also addresses transmission to and from staff in school settings, school-related mitigation measures including risk communication, testing, contact tracing, and the effectiveness and impacts of school closures.
This risk assessment provides an overall update on the COVID-19 situation in the EU/EEA, including latest data on the situation with SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern covered by previous targeted risk assessments.
This technical report provides a set of interim public health considerations to support EU/EEA public health authorities taking decisions on the administration of COVID-19 vaccines to adolescents (12- to 18-year-olds).
While decreasing trends in disease incidence are being observed in Europe overall (12% decrease in 14-day incidence of reported cases between 16 and 30 June), there is still community transmission reported in most EU/EEA countries, the UK and EU candidate and potential candidate countries. Additionally, some countries are reporting a resurgence of observed cases or large localised outbreaks.
On 31 December 2019, a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown aetiology was reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. On 9 January 2020, China CDC reported a novel coronavirus as the causative agent of this outbreak, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Since 31 December 2019 and as of 7 April 2020, over 1.3 million (1 316 988) cases of COVID-19 have been reported worldwide, and more than 70 000 (74 066) deaths. Half of these cases (608 500) have been reported from the EU/EEA countries and the UK, and over 50 000 (51 059) of them have died.