{"doi":"10.1016/j.ijid.2022.06.040","title":"Clinical and epidemiological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Los Angeles County youth during the first year of the pandemic","abstract":"OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to characterize SARS-CoV-2 infection patterns in Los Angeles (LA) County youth followed at our institution during the first pandemic year. DESIGN: A prospective cohort of patients aged < 25 years who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 using reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays between March 13, 2020, and March 31, 2021, was evaluated at a large LA County health network. Demographics, age distribution, and disease severity were analyzed. RESULTS: There were 28,088 youth aged < 25 years tested for SARS-CoV-2 using RT-PCR, with 1849 positive results identified (7%). Among the positive results, 475 of 11,922 (4%) were identified at the pandemic onset (March-September 2020) (Cohort 1) and 1374 of 16,166 (9%) between October 2020 and March 2021 (Cohort 2), P < 0.001. When disease severity was compared across cohorts, Cohort 2 had a greater proportion of asymptomatic and mild/moderate disease categories than Cohort 1 (98% vs 80%, respectively); conversely, Cohort 1 had a near-10-fold higher proportion of severe disease than Cohort 2 (17% vs 1.8%). Cohort 2 comprised younger patients with a mean age of 13.7 years vs 17.3 years in Cohort 1. Older age was associated with a higher percentage of infection, with 63% of all confirmed cases found in participants aged 19 to 25 years in Cohort 1, compared with 38% of confirmed cases in Cohort 2. Age increase was also associated with greater disease severity by linear regression modeling (P< 0.001). CONCLUSION: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) disease severity in youth decreased over time in LA County during the first pandemic year, likely a reflection of changing demographics, with younger children infected. A higher infection rate in youth did not lead to higher disease severity over time.","journal":"International Journal of Infectious Diseases","year":2022,"id":295521,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8487,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":305519,"name":"Tara Kerin","orcid":"0000-0003-2655-5605","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":456620,"name":"Trevon Fuller","orcid":"0000-0001-9954-4267","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":908768,"name":"Sophia Paiola","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":653433,"name":"Mary Catherine Cambou","orcid":"0000-0003-2527-2574","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":981440,"name":"Yash Motwani","orcid":"0000-0001-7066-1267","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":670416,"name":"Caitlin N. Newhouse","orcid":"0000-0002-5076-4258","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":455035,"name":"Shangxin Yang","orcid":"0000-0001-9991-1178","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":623681,"name":"Edwin Kamau","orcid":"0000-0002-5761-7883","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":38135,"name":"Omai B. Garner","orcid":"0000-0002-7366-2692","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":264775,"name":"Sukantha Chandrasekaran","orcid":"0000-0002-6232-5535","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":305511,"name":"Karin Nielsen‐Saines","orcid":"0000-0002-1742-5211","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":796848,"name":"Tawny Saleh","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":30,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:31:08.861377Z","pmid":"35803467","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}