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28 Aug: UK Times: All children who died of Covid-19 were already seriously ill
by Rhys Blakely, Science Correspondent
No child who was not already profoundly ill has died of Covid-19 in Britain, a large study has indicated, with the researchers saying that the results should reassure parents as a new school term begins.
The study looked at 260 hospitals in England, Wales and Scotland. Out of the 69,500 patients admitted with proven Covid-19 in the first six months of the year, 651 — or 0.9 per cent — were under 19 years of age.

Six deaths of minors were recorded. Three were newborn babies with other severe health problems. The other three were aged 15 to 18 years old and also had “profound health issues”.

Calum Semple, professor in child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Edinburgh, who is the senior author of the study, said...
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/all-children-who-died-of-covid-19-were-already-seriously-ill-jlxr8mkxq

28 Aug: STV Scotland: ‘Children not put at direct harm going back to school’
The study, published in The BMJ, is the largest in the world examining children hospitalised with Covid-19.
They stressed the absolute risk to children being admitted to hospital is “tiny” and the risk of needing critical care is “even tinier”...

Six children died in the study, all of whom had “profound comorbidities”.
“Severe disease is rare and death is vanishingly rare,” said Calum Semple, professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool...
The new study, published in The BMJ, examined data on children and young people admitted to hospital with Covid-19 across England, Wales and Scotland...

Separately, Professor Athimalaipet Ramanan, consultant paediatric rheumatologist at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, told a Royal Society of Medicine webinar that persistent fever and abdominal pain are “key presenting features” of the syndrome and should “not be ignored and should get medical attention”.

He said studies to date have shown most children respond well to intravenous immunoglobulin and steroids as treatment, and added his voice to the reassurance about children returning to school.
He said: “I think the benefits of children going to school significantly outweigh any tiny risk.”...

When asked about the number of black children admitted to critical care, Prof Semple said: “The fundamental issue here is that we did not have any deaths in otherwise healthy school-aged children.
“So, a black completely healthy child, no risk at all.
“In fact, the deaths that we did observe, where children are what we would describe as profound comorbidities – not a touch of asthma, not cystic fibrosis, these were children with profound comorbidities which, in normal circumstances would lead you to think that these children had existing life-limiting conditions
“So that that’s the sort of the key feature here is that Sars coronavirus is not causing death in children.

Prof Semple said the study was a “gargantuan” effort on behalf of NHS staff, with around 3,000 nurses and medical students from 216 hospitals filling in paper-based reports and manually uploading them to the study team.
https://news.stv.tv/scotland/children-not-put-at-direct-harm-going-back-to-school-by-covid-19