COVID-19 Updates

An artificial intelligence (AI) diagnostic system based on neural networks may assist in the diagnosis of COVID-19, according to a pilot study.

The system, called CXR-Net, was trained to differentiate SARS-CoV-2 chest x-rays (CXRs) from CXRs that are either normal or non–COVID-19 lung pathologies, explained Abdulah Haikal, an MD candidate at Wayne State University, Detroit.

Mr. Haikal described CXR-Net at the AACR Virtual Meeting: COVID-19 and Cancer (Abstract S11-04).

CXR-Net is a two-module pipeline, Mr. Haikal explained. Module I is based on Res-CR-Net, a type of neural network originally designed for the semantic segmentation of microscopy images, with the ability to retain the original resolution of the input images in the feature maps of all layers and in the final output.

Module II is a hybrid convolutional neural network in which the first convolutional layer with learned coefficients is replaced by a layer with fixed coefficients provided by the Wavelet Scattering Transform. Module II inputs patients’ CXRs and corresponding lung masks quantified by Module I, and generates as outputs a class assignment (COVID-19 or non–COVID-19) and high-resolution heat maps that detect the severe acute respiratory syndrome–-associated lung regions.

“The system is trained to differentiate COVID and non-COVID pathologies and produces a highly discriminative heat map to point to lung regions where COVID is suspected,” Mr. Haikal said. “The Wavelet Scattering Transform allows for fast determination of COVID versus non-COVID CXRs.”
 

Preliminary results and implications

CXR-Net was piloted on a small dataset of CXRs from non–COVID-19 and polymerase chain reaction–confirmed COVID-19 patients acquired at a single center in Detroit.

Upon fivefold cross validation of the training set with 2,265 images, 90% accuracy was observed when the training set was tested against the validation set. However, once 1,532 new images were introduced, a 76% accuracy rate was observed.

The F1 scores were 0.81 and 0.70 for the training and test sets, respectively.

“I’m really excited about this new approach, and I think AI will allow us to do more with less, which is exciting,” said Ross L. Levine, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who led a discussion session with Mr. Haikal about CXR-Net.

One question raised during the discussion was whether the technology will help health care providers be more thoughtful about when and how they image COVID-19 patients.

“The more data you feed into the system, the stronger and more accurate it becomes,” Mr. Haikal said. “However, until we have data sharing from multiple centers, we won’t see improved accuracy results.”

Another question was whether this technology could be integrated with more clinical parameters.

“Some individuals are afraid that AI will replace the job of a professional, but it will only make it better for us,” Mr. Haikal said. “We don’t rely on current imaging techniques to make a definitive diagnosis, but rather have a specificity and sensitivity to establish a diagnosis, and AI can be used in the same way as a diagnostic tool.”

Mr. Haikal and Dr. Levine disclosed no conflicts of interest. No funding sources were reported in the presentation.

An artificial intelligence (AI) diagnostic system based on neural networks may assist in the diagnosis of COVID-19, according to a pilot study.

The system, called CXR-Net, was trained to differentiate SARS-CoV-2 chest x-rays (CXRs) from CXRs that are either normal or non–COVID-19 lung pathologies, explained Abdulah Haikal, an MD candidate at Wayne State University, Detroit.

Mr. Haikal described CXR-Net at the AACR Virtual Meeting: COVID-19 and Cancer (Abstract S11-04).

CXR-Net is a two-module pipeline, Mr. Haikal explained. Module I is based on Res-CR-Net, a type of neural network originally designed for the semantic segmentation of microscopy images, with the ability to retain the original resolution of the input images in the feature maps of all layers and in the final output.

Module II is a hybrid convolutional neural network in which the first convolutional layer with learned coefficients is replaced by a layer with fixed coefficients provided by the Wavelet Scattering Transform. Module II inputs patients’ CXRs and corresponding lung masks quantified by Module I, and generates as outputs a class assignment (COVID-19 or non–COVID-19) and high-resolution heat maps that detect the severe acute respiratory syndrome–-associated lung regions.

“The system is trained to differentiate COVID and non-COVID pathologies and produces a highly discriminative heat map to point to lung regions where COVID is suspected,” Mr. Haikal said. “The Wavelet Scattering Transform allows for fast determination of COVID versus non-COVID CXRs.”
 

Preliminary results and implications

CXR-Net was piloted on a small dataset of CXRs from non–COVID-19 and polymerase chain reaction–confirmed COVID-19 patients acquired at a single center in Detroit.

Upon fivefold cross validation of the training set with 2,265 images, 90% accuracy was observed when the training set was tested against the validation set. However, once 1,532 new images were introduced, a 76% accuracy rate was observed.

The F1 scores were 0.81 and 0.70 for the training and test sets, respectively.

“I’m really excited about this new approach, and I think AI will allow us to do more with less, which is exciting,” said Ross L. Levine, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who led a discussion session with Mr. Haikal about CXR-Net.

One question raised during the discussion was whether the technology will help health care providers be more thoughtful about when and how they image COVID-19 patients.

“The more data you feed into the system, the stronger and more accurate it becomes,” Mr. Haikal said. “However, until we have data sharing from multiple centers, we won’t see improved accuracy results.”

Another question was whether this technology could be integrated with more clinical parameters.

“Some individuals are afraid that AI will replace the job of a professional, but it will only make it better for us,” Mr. Haikal said. “We don’t rely on current imaging techniques to make a definitive diagnosis, but rather have a specificity and sensitivity to establish a diagnosis, and AI can be used in the same way as a diagnostic tool.”

Mr. Haikal and Dr. Levine disclosed no conflicts of interest. No funding sources were reported in the presentation.

An artificial intelligence (AI) diagnostic system based on neural networks may assist in the diagnosis of COVID-19, according to a pilot study.

The system, called CXR-Net, was trained to differentiate SARS-CoV-2 chest x-rays (CXRs) from CXRs that are either normal or non–COVID-19 lung pathologies, explained Abdulah Haikal, an MD candidate at Wayne State University, Detroit.

Mr. Haikal described CXR-Net at the AACR Virtual Meeting: COVID-19 and Cancer (Abstract S11-04).

CXR-Net is a two-module pipeline, Mr. Haikal explained. Module I is based on Res-CR-Net, a type of neural network originally designed for the semantic segmentation of microscopy images, with the ability to retain the original resolution of the input images in the feature maps of all layers and in the final output.

Module II is a hybrid convolutional neural network in which the first convolutional layer with learned coefficients is replaced by a layer with fixed coefficients provided by the Wavelet Scattering Transform. Module II inputs patients’ CXRs and corresponding lung masks quantified by Module I, and generates as outputs a class assignment (COVID-19 or non–COVID-19) and high-resolution heat maps that detect the severe acute respiratory syndrome–-associated lung regions.

“The system is trained to differentiate COVID and non-COVID pathologies and produces a highly discriminative heat map to point to lung regions where COVID is suspected,” Mr. Haikal said. “The Wavelet Scattering Transform allows for fast determination of COVID versus non-COVID CXRs.”
 

Preliminary results and implications

CXR-Net was piloted on a small dataset of CXRs from non–COVID-19 and polymerase chain reaction–confirmed COVID-19 patients acquired at a single center in Detroit.

Upon fivefold cross validation of the training set with 2,265 images, 90% accuracy was observed when the training set was tested against the validation set. However, once 1,532 new images were introduced, a 76% accuracy rate was observed.

The F1 scores were 0.81 and 0.70 for the training and test sets, respectively.

“I’m really excited about this new approach, and I think AI will allow us to do more with less, which is exciting,” said Ross L. Levine, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who led a discussion session with Mr. Haikal about CXR-Net.

One question raised during the discussion was whether the technology will help health care providers be more thoughtful about when and how they image COVID-19 patients.

“The more data you feed into the system, the stronger and more accurate it becomes,” Mr. Haikal said. “However, until we have data sharing from multiple centers, we won’t see improved accuracy results.”

Another question was whether this technology could be integrated with more clinical parameters.

“Some individuals are afraid that AI will replace the job of a professional, but it will only make it better for us,” Mr. Haikal said. “We don’t rely on current imaging techniques to make a definitive diagnosis, but rather have a specificity and sensitivity to establish a diagnosis, and AI can be used in the same way as a diagnostic tool.”

Mr. Haikal and Dr. Levine disclosed no conflicts of interest. No funding sources were reported in the presentation.

The SARS-CoV-2 variant first detected in the United Kingdom is rapidly becoming the dominant strain in several countries and is doubling every 10 days in the United States, according to new data.

The findings by Nicole L. Washington, PhD, associate director of research at the genomics company Helix, and colleagues were posted Feb. 7, 2021, on the preprint server medRxiv. The paper has not been peer-reviewed in a scientific journal.

The researchers also found that the transmission rate in the United States of the variant, labeled B.1.1.7, is 30%-40% higher than that of more common lineages.

While clinical outcomes initially were thought to be similar to those of other SARS-CoV-2 variants, early reports suggest that infection with the B.1.1.7 variant may increase death risk by about 30%. 

A coauthor of the current study, Kristian Andersen, PhD, told the New York Times , “Nothing in this paper is surprising, but people need to see it.”

Dr. Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., added that “we should probably prepare for this being the predominant lineage in most places in the United States by March.”

The study of the B.1.1.7 variant adds support for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prediction in January that it would dominate by March.

“Our study shows that the U.S. is on a similar trajectory as other countries where B.1.1.7 rapidly became the dominant SARS-CoV-2 variant, requiring immediate and decisive action to minimize COVID-19 morbidity and mortality,” the researchers wrote.

The authors pointed out that the B.1.1.7 variant became the dominant SARS-CoV-2 strain in the United Kingdom within a couple of months of its detection.

“Since then, the variant has been increasingly observed across many European countries, including Portugal and Ireland, which, like the U.K., observed devastating waves of COVID-19 after B.1.1.7 became dominant,” the authors wrote.
 

“Category 5” storm

The B.1.1.7 variant has likely been spreading between U.S. states since at least December, they wrote.

This news organization reported on Jan. 15 that, as of Jan. 13, the B.1.1.7 variant was seen in 76 cases across 12 U.S. states, according to an early release of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 

As of Feb. 7, there were 690 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant in the US in 33 states, according to the CDC.

Dr. Washington and colleagues examined more than 500,000 coronavirus test samples from cases across the United States that were tested at San Mateo, Calif.–based Helix facilities since July.

In the study, they found inconsistent prevalence of the variant across states. By the last week in January, the researchers estimated the proportion of B.1.1.7 in the U.S. population to be about 2.1% of all COVID-19 cases, though they found it made up about 2% of all COVID-19 cases in California and about 4.5% of cases in Florida. The authors acknowledged that their data is less robust outside of those two states.

Though that seems a relatively low frequency, “our estimates show that its growth rate is at least 35%-45% increased and doubling every week and a half,” the authors wrote.

“Because laboratories in the U.S. are only sequencing a small subset of SARS-CoV-2 samples, the true sequence diversity of SARS-CoV-2 in this country is still unknown,” they noted.

Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, said last week that the United States is facing a “Category 5” storm with the spread of the B.1.1.7 variant as well as the variants first identified in South Africa and Brazil.

“We are going to see something like we have not seen yet in this country,” Dr. Osterholm said recently on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Lead author Nicole L. Washington and many of the coauthors are employees of Helix. Other coauthors are employees of Illumina. Three coauthors own stock in ILMN. The work was funded by Illumina, Helix, the Innovative Genomics Institute, and the New Frontiers in Research Fund provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

The SARS-CoV-2 variant first detected in the United Kingdom is rapidly becoming the dominant strain in several countries and is doubling every 10 days in the United States, according to new data.

The findings by Nicole L. Washington, PhD, associate director of research at the genomics company Helix, and colleagues were posted Feb. 7, 2021, on the preprint server medRxiv. The paper has not been peer-reviewed in a scientific journal.

The researchers also found that the transmission rate in the United States of the variant, labeled B.1.1.7, is 30%-40% higher than that of more common lineages.

While clinical outcomes initially were thought to be similar to those of other SARS-CoV-2 variants, early reports suggest that infection with the B.1.1.7 variant may increase death risk by about 30%. 

A coauthor of the current study, Kristian Andersen, PhD, told the New York Times , “Nothing in this paper is surprising, but people need to see it.”

Dr. Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., added that “we should probably prepare for this being the predominant lineage in most places in the United States by March.”

The study of the B.1.1.7 variant adds support for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prediction in January that it would dominate by March.

“Our study shows that the U.S. is on a similar trajectory as other countries where B.1.1.7 rapidly became the dominant SARS-CoV-2 variant, requiring immediate and decisive action to minimize COVID-19 morbidity and mortality,” the researchers wrote.

The authors pointed out that the B.1.1.7 variant became the dominant SARS-CoV-2 strain in the United Kingdom within a couple of months of its detection.

“Since then, the variant has been increasingly observed across many European countries, including Portugal and Ireland, which, like the U.K., observed devastating waves of COVID-19 after B.1.1.7 became dominant,” the authors wrote.
 

“Category 5” storm

The B.1.1.7 variant has likely been spreading between U.S. states since at least December, they wrote.

This news organization reported on Jan. 15 that, as of Jan. 13, the B.1.1.7 variant was seen in 76 cases across 12 U.S. states, according to an early release of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 

As of Feb. 7, there were 690 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant in the US in 33 states, according to the CDC.

Dr. Washington and colleagues examined more than 500,000 coronavirus test samples from cases across the United States that were tested at San Mateo, Calif.–based Helix facilities since July.

In the study, they found inconsistent prevalence of the variant across states. By the last week in January, the researchers estimated the proportion of B.1.1.7 in the U.S. population to be about 2.1% of all COVID-19 cases, though they found it made up about 2% of all COVID-19 cases in California and about 4.5% of cases in Florida. The authors acknowledged that their data is less robust outside of those two states.

Though that seems a relatively low frequency, “our estimates show that its growth rate is at least 35%-45% increased and doubling every week and a half,” the authors wrote.

“Because laboratories in the U.S. are only sequencing a small subset of SARS-CoV-2 samples, the true sequence diversity of SARS-CoV-2 in this country is still unknown,” they noted.

Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, said last week that the United States is facing a “Category 5” storm with the spread of the B.1.1.7 variant as well as the variants first identified in South Africa and Brazil.

“We are going to see something like we have not seen yet in this country,” Dr. Osterholm said recently on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Lead author Nicole L. Washington and many of the coauthors are employees of Helix. Other coauthors are employees of Illumina. Three coauthors own stock in ILMN. The work was funded by Illumina, Helix, the Innovative Genomics Institute, and the New Frontiers in Research Fund provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

The SARS-CoV-2 variant first detected in the United Kingdom is rapidly becoming the dominant strain in several countries and is doubling every 10 days in the United States, according to new data.

The findings by Nicole L. Washington, PhD, associate director of research at the genomics company Helix, and colleagues were posted Feb. 7, 2021, on the preprint server medRxiv. The paper has not been peer-reviewed in a scientific journal.

The researchers also found that the transmission rate in the United States of the variant, labeled B.1.1.7, is 30%-40% higher than that of more common lineages.

While clinical outcomes initially were thought to be similar to those of other SARS-CoV-2 variants, early reports suggest that infection with the B.1.1.7 variant may increase death risk by about 30%. 

A coauthor of the current study, Kristian Andersen, PhD, told the New York Times , “Nothing in this paper is surprising, but people need to see it.”

Dr. Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., added that “we should probably prepare for this being the predominant lineage in most places in the United States by March.”

The study of the B.1.1.7 variant adds support for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prediction in January that it would dominate by March.

“Our study shows that the U.S. is on a similar trajectory as other countries where B.1.1.7 rapidly became the dominant SARS-CoV-2 variant, requiring immediate and decisive action to minimize COVID-19 morbidity and mortality,” the researchers wrote.

The authors pointed out that the B.1.1.7 variant became the dominant SARS-CoV-2 strain in the United Kingdom within a couple of months of its detection.

“Since then, the variant has been increasingly observed across many European countries, including Portugal and Ireland, which, like the U.K., observed devastating waves of COVID-19 after B.1.1.7 became dominant,” the authors wrote.
 

“Category 5” storm

The B.1.1.7 variant has likely been spreading between U.S. states since at least December, they wrote.

This news organization reported on Jan. 15 that, as of Jan. 13, the B.1.1.7 variant was seen in 76 cases across 12 U.S. states, according to an early release of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 

As of Feb. 7, there were 690 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant in the US in 33 states, according to the CDC.

Dr. Washington and colleagues examined more than 500,000 coronavirus test samples from cases across the United States that were tested at San Mateo, Calif.–based Helix facilities since July.

In the study, they found inconsistent prevalence of the variant across states. By the last week in January, the researchers estimated the proportion of B.1.1.7 in the U.S. population to be about 2.1% of all COVID-19 cases, though they found it made up about 2% of all COVID-19 cases in California and about 4.5% of cases in Florida. The authors acknowledged that their data is less robust outside of those two states.

Though that seems a relatively low frequency, “our estimates show that its growth rate is at least 35%-45% increased and doubling every week and a half,” the authors wrote.

“Because laboratories in the U.S. are only sequencing a small subset of SARS-CoV-2 samples, the true sequence diversity of SARS-CoV-2 in this country is still unknown,” they noted.

Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, said last week that the United States is facing a “Category 5” storm with the spread of the B.1.1.7 variant as well as the variants first identified in South Africa and Brazil.

“We are going to see something like we have not seen yet in this country,” Dr. Osterholm said recently on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Lead author Nicole L. Washington and many of the coauthors are employees of Helix. Other coauthors are employees of Illumina. Three coauthors own stock in ILMN. The work was funded by Illumina, Helix, the Innovative Genomics Institute, and the New Frontiers in Research Fund provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

The emergence of multiple inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) in association with COVID-19 may be complicating the investigation and diagnosis of more common viral and bacterial infections, potentially delaying treatment and prolonging hospital stays.

Two recent articles published online in Hospital Pediatrics provide evidence of this phenomenon. The articles outlined case studies of children who underwent extensive investigation for MIS-C when in fact they had less severe and more common infections. MIS-C is a severe but rare syndrome that involves systemic hyperinflammation with fever and multisystem organ dysfunction similar to that of Kawasaki disease (KD).

In one of the articles, Matthew Molloy, MD, MPH, of the division of pediatric hospital medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and colleagues aptly asked: “What are we missing in our search for MIS-C?”
 

E. coli, not SARS-CoV-2

That question arose from a case involving a 3-year-old boy who had a 6-day history of fever and fatigue. Three days earlier, he had tested negative for strep antigen and COVID-19. He had a persistent, high fever, reduced appetite, and reduced urine output and was taken to the ED. On physical examination, there was no rash, skin peeling, redness of the eye or oral mucosa, congestion, rhinorrhea, cough, shortness of breath, chest pain, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea.

Urinalysis results and exam findings were suspicious for pyelonephritis. Other findings from an extensive laboratory workup raised the alarm that the boy was suffering from MIS-C as opposed to incomplete KD. After admission to hospital medicine, the cardiology, rheumatology, and infectious disease teams were called in to consult.

Repeat labs were planned for the following day before initiating therapy. On day 2, the child’s urine culture was positive for gram-negative rods, later identified as Escherichia coli. The boy was started on ceftriaxone. Left renal scarring was apparent on ultrasound. The patient’s condition resolved after 36 hours, and he was discharged home with antibiotics.
 

‘Diagnosis derailed’

Calling this a case of “diagnosis derailed,” the authors noted that, in the pre-COVID era, this child’s signs and symptoms would likely have triggered a more targeted and less costly evaluation for more common infectious and noninfectious causes, including pyelonephritis, absent any physical exam findings consistent with KD.

“However, the patient presented in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic with growing awareness of a new clinical entity,” Dr. Molloy and colleagues wrote. “Anchored to the patient’s persistent fever, the medical team initiated an extensive, costly, and ultimately unnecessary workup to avoid missing the diagnosis of MIS-C; a not yet well-described diagnosis with potentially severe morbidity.”

Confirmation bias and diagnostic momentum likely contributed to the early focus on MIS-C rather than more common alternatives, the authors acknowledged. The addition of mildly abnormal laboratory data not typically obtained in the evaluation of fever led the team astray. “The diagnosis and definitive treatment may have been made earlier had the focus on concern for MIS-C not been present,” Dr. Molloy said in an interview.
 

Keeping value in care

The authors recognized that their initial approach to evaluating for MIS-C provided low-value care. “In our desire to not ‘miss’ MIS-C, we were performing costly evaluations that at times produced mildly abnormal, nonspecific results,” they wrote. That triggered a cascade of specialty consultations, follow-up testing, and an unwarranted diagnostic preoccupation with MIS-C.

Determining the extra price tag for the child’s workup would be complex and difficult because there is a difference in the cost to the hospital and the cost to the family, Dr. Molloy said. “However, there are potential cost savings that would be related to making a correct diagnosis in a timely manner in terms of preventing downstream effects from delayed diagnoses.”

Even as clinicians struggle with the challenging SARS-CoV-2 learning curve, Dr. Molloy and associates urged them to continue to strive for high-value care, with an unwavering focus on using only necessary resources, a stewardship the pandemic has shown to be critical.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has been an incredibly stressful time for physicians and for families,” Dr. Molloy said. “COVID-19 and related conditions like MIS-C are new, and we are learning more and more about them every week. These diagnoses are understandably on the minds of physicians and families when children present with fever.” Notwithstanding, the boy’s case underscores the need for clinicians to consider alternate diagnoses and the value of the care provided.
 

Impact of bias

Dr. Molloy’s group brings home the cognitive biases practitioners often suffer from, including anchoring and confirmation bias and diagnostic momentum, according to J. Howard Smart, MD, chief of pediatrics at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women and Newborns, San Diego, and an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at University of California, San Diego.

“But it is one thing to recognize these in retrospect and quite another to consider whether they may be happening to you yourself in real time,” he said in an interview. “It is almost as if we need to have a ‘time out,’ where we stop and ask ourselves whether there is something else that could be explaining our patient’s presentation, something that would be more common and more likely to be occurring.”

According to Dr. Smart, who was not involved in Dr. Molloy’s study, the team’s premature diagnostic focus on MIS-C was almost the inverse of what typically happens with KD. “It is usually the case that Kawasaki disease does not enter the differential diagnosis until late in the course of the fever, typically on day 5 or later, when it may have been better to think of it earlier,” he said.

In the second article, Andrea Dean, MD, of the department of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, both in Houston, and colleagues outlined the cases of five patients aged 8-17 years who were hospitalized in May 2020 for suspected MIS-C. They exhibited inflammatory and other concerning indicators but were eventually discharged with a diagnosis of murine typhus.

This flea-borne infection, most commonly reported in the United States in the southeastern Gulf Coast region, Hawaii, and California, is often associated with a triad of fever, rash, and headache.

Cases have been rising in southern Texas, and Dr. Dean and colleagues postulated that school closures and social distancing may have increased exposure as a result of children spending more time outdoors or with pets. “Alternatively, parental concern for SARS-CoV-2 infection could mean children with symptoms are presenting to care and being referred or admitted to the hospital more frequently due to provider concern for MIS-C,” they wrote.
 

Cardiac involvement

The most concerning of the five cases in terms of possible MIS-C, Dr. Dean said in an interview, was that of a 12-year-old boy who had fever for 6 days in association with headache, eczematous rash, dry lips, and conjunctivitis. Laboratory tests showed a mildly elevated C-reactive protein level, hyponatremia, and thrombocytopenia, as well as sterile pyuria and mildly elevated prothrombin time. He was treated empirically with doxycycline, and his fever resolved over the next 24 hours.

An echocardiogram at initial evaluation, however, revealed mild dilation of the left anterior descending and right coronary arteries, which led to the administration of intravenous immunoglobulin and aspirin for atypical KD, in contrast to MIS-C. The authors postulated that mild cardiac involvement in disorders other than MIS-C and KD may be underrecognized.

The lesson from these cases, Dr. Dean and associates concluded, is that hospitalists must maintain a wide differential diagnosis when assessing a child with prolonged fever and evidence of systemic inflammation. The CDC stipulates that a diagnosis of MIS-C requires the absence of a plausible alternative diagnosis.

In addition to common viral, bacterial, and noninfectious disorders, a range of regional endemic rickettsial and parasitic infections must be considered as alternative diagnoses to MIS-C. “Many of these diseases cannot be reliably differentiated from MIS-C on presentation, and as community exposure to SARS-CoV-2 grows, hospitalists should be prepared to admit febrile children with evidence of systemic inflammation for brief observation periods to evaluate for MIS-C,” Dr. Dean’s group wrote. In this context, however, empiric treatment for common or even uncommon infectious diseases may avoid overdiagnosis and overtreatment of MIS-C as well as improve patient outcomes.

“We do have specific MIS-C guidelines at our institution,” Dr. Dean said, “but like all institutions, we are dealing with the broad definition of MIS-C according to the World Health Organization and the CDC, which is really the takeaway from this paper.”
 

More difficult differentiation

Both groups of authors pointed out that, as SARS-CoV-2 spreads throughout a community, a higher percentage of the population will have positive results on antibody testing, and such results will become less useful for differentiating between MIS-C and other conditions.

Despite these series’ cautionary lessons, other experts point to the critical importance of including MIS-C early on in the interest of efficient diagnosis and therapy. “In the cases cited, other pathologies were evaluated for and treated accordingly,” said Kara Gross Margolis, MD, AGAF, an associate professor of pediatrics in the division of pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital,New York. “These papers stress the need for a balance that is important, and all potential diagnoses need to be considered, but MIS-C, due to its potential severe consequences, also needs to be on our differential now.”

In her view, as this new high-morbidity entity becomes more widespread during the pandemic, it will be increasingly important to keep this condition on the diagnostic radar.

Interestingly, in a converse example of diagnostic clouding, Dr. Gross Margolis’s group reported (Gastroenterology. 2020 Oct;159[4]:1571-4.e2) last year on a pediatric case series in which the presence of gastrointestinal symptoms in children with COVID-19–related MIS-C muddied the diagnosis by confusing this potentially severe syndrome with more common and less toxic gastrointestinal infections.

According to Dr. Smart, although the two reports don’t offer evidence for a particular diagnostic practice, they can inform the decision-making process. “It may be that we will have enough evidence shortly to say what the best practice is regarding diagnostic evaluation of possible MIS-C cases,” he said. “Until then, we must remember that common things occur commonly, even during a global pandemic.”

Neither of the two reports received any specific funding. The authors disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

The emergence of multiple inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) in association with COVID-19 may be complicating the investigation and diagnosis of more common viral and bacterial infections, potentially delaying treatment and prolonging hospital stays.

Two recent articles published online in Hospital Pediatrics provide evidence of this phenomenon. The articles outlined case studies of children who underwent extensive investigation for MIS-C when in fact they had less severe and more common infections. MIS-C is a severe but rare syndrome that involves systemic hyperinflammation with fever and multisystem organ dysfunction similar to that of Kawasaki disease (KD).

In one of the articles, Matthew Molloy, MD, MPH, of the division of pediatric hospital medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and colleagues aptly asked: “What are we missing in our search for MIS-C?”
 

E. coli, not SARS-CoV-2

That question arose from a case involving a 3-year-old boy who had a 6-day history of fever and fatigue. Three days earlier, he had tested negative for strep antigen and COVID-19. He had a persistent, high fever, reduced appetite, and reduced urine output and was taken to the ED. On physical examination, there was no rash, skin peeling, redness of the eye or oral mucosa, congestion, rhinorrhea, cough, shortness of breath, chest pain, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea.

Urinalysis results and exam findings were suspicious for pyelonephritis. Other findings from an extensive laboratory workup raised the alarm that the boy was suffering from MIS-C as opposed to incomplete KD. After admission to hospital medicine, the cardiology, rheumatology, and infectious disease teams were called in to consult.

Repeat labs were planned for the following day before initiating therapy. On day 2, the child’s urine culture was positive for gram-negative rods, later identified as Escherichia coli. The boy was started on ceftriaxone. Left renal scarring was apparent on ultrasound. The patient’s condition resolved after 36 hours, and he was discharged home with antibiotics.
 

‘Diagnosis derailed’

Calling this a case of “diagnosis derailed,” the authors noted that, in the pre-COVID era, this child’s signs and symptoms would likely have triggered a more targeted and less costly evaluation for more common infectious and noninfectious causes, including pyelonephritis, absent any physical exam findings consistent with KD.

“However, the patient presented in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic with growing awareness of a new clinical entity,” Dr. Molloy and colleagues wrote. “Anchored to the patient’s persistent fever, the medical team initiated an extensive, costly, and ultimately unnecessary workup to avoid missing the diagnosis of MIS-C; a not yet well-described diagnosis with potentially severe morbidity.”

Confirmation bias and diagnostic momentum likely contributed to the early focus on MIS-C rather than more common alternatives, the authors acknowledged. The addition of mildly abnormal laboratory data not typically obtained in the evaluation of fever led the team astray. “The diagnosis and definitive treatment may have been made earlier had the focus on concern for MIS-C not been present,” Dr. Molloy said in an interview.
 

Keeping value in care

The authors recognized that their initial approach to evaluating for MIS-C provided low-value care. “In our desire to not ‘miss’ MIS-C, we were performing costly evaluations that at times produced mildly abnormal, nonspecific results,” they wrote. That triggered a cascade of specialty consultations, follow-up testing, and an unwarranted diagnostic preoccupation with MIS-C.

Determining the extra price tag for the child’s workup would be complex and difficult because there is a difference in the cost to the hospital and the cost to the family, Dr. Molloy said. “However, there are potential cost savings that would be related to making a correct diagnosis in a timely manner in terms of preventing downstream effects from delayed diagnoses.”

Even as clinicians struggle with the challenging SARS-CoV-2 learning curve, Dr. Molloy and associates urged them to continue to strive for high-value care, with an unwavering focus on using only necessary resources, a stewardship the pandemic has shown to be critical.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has been an incredibly stressful time for physicians and for families,” Dr. Molloy said. “COVID-19 and related conditions like MIS-C are new, and we are learning more and more about them every week. These diagnoses are understandably on the minds of physicians and families when children present with fever.” Notwithstanding, the boy’s case underscores the need for clinicians to consider alternate diagnoses and the value of the care provided.
 

Impact of bias

Dr. Molloy’s group brings home the cognitive biases practitioners often suffer from, including anchoring and confirmation bias and diagnostic momentum, according to J. Howard Smart, MD, chief of pediatrics at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women and Newborns, San Diego, and an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at University of California, San Diego.

“But it is one thing to recognize these in retrospect and quite another to consider whether they may be happening to you yourself in real time,” he said in an interview. “It is almost as if we need to have a ‘time out,’ where we stop and ask ourselves whether there is something else that could be explaining our patient’s presentation, something that would be more common and more likely to be occurring.”

According to Dr. Smart, who was not involved in Dr. Molloy’s study, the team’s premature diagnostic focus on MIS-C was almost the inverse of what typically happens with KD. “It is usually the case that Kawasaki disease does not enter the differential diagnosis until late in the course of the fever, typically on day 5 or later, when it may have been better to think of it earlier,” he said.

In the second article, Andrea Dean, MD, of the department of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, both in Houston, and colleagues outlined the cases of five patients aged 8-17 years who were hospitalized in May 2020 for suspected MIS-C. They exhibited inflammatory and other concerning indicators but were eventually discharged with a diagnosis of murine typhus.

This flea-borne infection, most commonly reported in the United States in the southeastern Gulf Coast region, Hawaii, and California, is often associated with a triad of fever, rash, and headache.

Cases have been rising in southern Texas, and Dr. Dean and colleagues postulated that school closures and social distancing may have increased exposure as a result of children spending more time outdoors or with pets. “Alternatively, parental concern for SARS-CoV-2 infection could mean children with symptoms are presenting to care and being referred or admitted to the hospital more frequently due to provider concern for MIS-C,” they wrote.
 

Cardiac involvement

The most concerning of the five cases in terms of possible MIS-C, Dr. Dean said in an interview, was that of a 12-year-old boy who had fever for 6 days in association with headache, eczematous rash, dry lips, and conjunctivitis. Laboratory tests showed a mildly elevated C-reactive protein level, hyponatremia, and thrombocytopenia, as well as sterile pyuria and mildly elevated prothrombin time. He was treated empirically with doxycycline, and his fever resolved over the next 24 hours.

An echocardiogram at initial evaluation, however, revealed mild dilation of the left anterior descending and right coronary arteries, which led to the administration of intravenous immunoglobulin and aspirin for atypical KD, in contrast to MIS-C. The authors postulated that mild cardiac involvement in disorders other than MIS-C and KD may be underrecognized.

The lesson from these cases, Dr. Dean and associates concluded, is that hospitalists must maintain a wide differential diagnosis when assessing a child with prolonged fever and evidence of systemic inflammation. The CDC stipulates that a diagnosis of MIS-C requires the absence of a plausible alternative diagnosis.

In addition to common viral, bacterial, and noninfectious disorders, a range of regional endemic rickettsial and parasitic infections must be considered as alternative diagnoses to MIS-C. “Many of these diseases cannot be reliably differentiated from MIS-C on presentation, and as community exposure to SARS-CoV-2 grows, hospitalists should be prepared to admit febrile children with evidence of systemic inflammation for brief observation periods to evaluate for MIS-C,” Dr. Dean’s group wrote. In this context, however, empiric treatment for common or even uncommon infectious diseases may avoid overdiagnosis and overtreatment of MIS-C as well as improve patient outcomes.

“We do have specific MIS-C guidelines at our institution,” Dr. Dean said, “but like all institutions, we are dealing with the broad definition of MIS-C according to the World Health Organization and the CDC, which is really the takeaway from this paper.”
 

More difficult differentiation

Both groups of authors pointed out that, as SARS-CoV-2 spreads throughout a community, a higher percentage of the population will have positive results on antibody testing, and such results will become less useful for differentiating between MIS-C and other conditions.

Despite these series’ cautionary lessons, other experts point to the critical importance of including MIS-C early on in the interest of efficient diagnosis and therapy. “In the cases cited, other pathologies were evaluated for and treated accordingly,” said Kara Gross Margolis, MD, AGAF, an associate professor of pediatrics in the division of pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital,New York. “These papers stress the need for a balance that is important, and all potential diagnoses need to be considered, but MIS-C, due to its potential severe consequences, also needs to be on our differential now.”

In her view, as this new high-morbidity entity becomes more widespread during the pandemic, it will be increasingly important to keep this condition on the diagnostic radar.

Interestingly, in a converse example of diagnostic clouding, Dr. Gross Margolis’s group reported (Gastroenterology. 2020 Oct;159[4]:1571-4.e2) last year on a pediatric case series in which the presence of gastrointestinal symptoms in children with COVID-19–related MIS-C muddied the diagnosis by confusing this potentially severe syndrome with more common and less toxic gastrointestinal infections.

According to Dr. Smart, although the two reports don’t offer evidence for a particular diagnostic practice, they can inform the decision-making process. “It may be that we will have enough evidence shortly to say what the best practice is regarding diagnostic evaluation of possible MIS-C cases,” he said. “Until then, we must remember that common things occur commonly, even during a global pandemic.”

Neither of the two reports received any specific funding. The authors disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

The emergence of multiple inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) in association with COVID-19 may be complicating the investigation and diagnosis of more common viral and bacterial infections, potentially delaying treatment and prolonging hospital stays.

Two recent articles published online in Hospital Pediatrics provide evidence of this phenomenon. The articles outlined case studies of children who underwent extensive investigation for MIS-C when in fact they had less severe and more common infections. MIS-C is a severe but rare syndrome that involves systemic hyperinflammation with fever and multisystem organ dysfunction similar to that of Kawasaki disease (KD).

In one of the articles, Matthew Molloy, MD, MPH, of the division of pediatric hospital medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and colleagues aptly asked: “What are we missing in our search for MIS-C?”
 

E. coli, not SARS-CoV-2

That question arose from a case involving a 3-year-old boy who had a 6-day history of fever and fatigue. Three days earlier, he had tested negative for strep antigen and COVID-19. He had a persistent, high fever, reduced appetite, and reduced urine output and was taken to the ED. On physical examination, there was no rash, skin peeling, redness of the eye or oral mucosa, congestion, rhinorrhea, cough, shortness of breath, chest pain, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea.

Urinalysis results and exam findings were suspicious for pyelonephritis. Other findings from an extensive laboratory workup raised the alarm that the boy was suffering from MIS-C as opposed to incomplete KD. After admission to hospital medicine, the cardiology, rheumatology, and infectious disease teams were called in to consult.

Repeat labs were planned for the following day before initiating therapy. On day 2, the child’s urine culture was positive for gram-negative rods, later identified as Escherichia coli. The boy was started on ceftriaxone. Left renal scarring was apparent on ultrasound. The patient’s condition resolved after 36 hours, and he was discharged home with antibiotics.
 

‘Diagnosis derailed’

Calling this a case of “diagnosis derailed,” the authors noted that, in the pre-COVID era, this child’s signs and symptoms would likely have triggered a more targeted and less costly evaluation for more common infectious and noninfectious causes, including pyelonephritis, absent any physical exam findings consistent with KD.

“However, the patient presented in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic with growing awareness of a new clinical entity,” Dr. Molloy and colleagues wrote. “Anchored to the patient’s persistent fever, the medical team initiated an extensive, costly, and ultimately unnecessary workup to avoid missing the diagnosis of MIS-C; a not yet well-described diagnosis with potentially severe morbidity.”

Confirmation bias and diagnostic momentum likely contributed to the early focus on MIS-C rather than more common alternatives, the authors acknowledged. The addition of mildly abnormal laboratory data not typically obtained in the evaluation of fever led the team astray. “The diagnosis and definitive treatment may have been made earlier had the focus on concern for MIS-C not been present,” Dr. Molloy said in an interview.
 

Keeping value in care

The authors recognized that their initial approach to evaluating for MIS-C provided low-value care. “In our desire to not ‘miss’ MIS-C, we were performing costly evaluations that at times produced mildly abnormal, nonspecific results,” they wrote. That triggered a cascade of specialty consultations, follow-up testing, and an unwarranted diagnostic preoccupation with MIS-C.

Determining the extra price tag for the child’s workup would be complex and difficult because there is a difference in the cost to the hospital and the cost to the family, Dr. Molloy said. “However, there are potential cost savings that would be related to making a correct diagnosis in a timely manner in terms of preventing downstream effects from delayed diagnoses.”

Even as clinicians struggle with the challenging SARS-CoV-2 learning curve, Dr. Molloy and associates urged them to continue to strive for high-value care, with an unwavering focus on using only necessary resources, a stewardship the pandemic has shown to be critical.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has been an incredibly stressful time for physicians and for families,” Dr. Molloy said. “COVID-19 and related conditions like MIS-C are new, and we are learning more and more about them every week. These diagnoses are understandably on the minds of physicians and families when children present with fever.” Notwithstanding, the boy’s case underscores the need for clinicians to consider alternate diagnoses and the value of the care provided.
 

Impact of bias

Dr. Molloy’s group brings home the cognitive biases practitioners often suffer from, including anchoring and confirmation bias and diagnostic momentum, according to J. Howard Smart, MD, chief of pediatrics at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women and Newborns, San Diego, and an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at University of California, San Diego.

“But it is one thing to recognize these in retrospect and quite another to consider whether they may be happening to you yourself in real time,” he said in an interview. “It is almost as if we need to have a ‘time out,’ where we stop and ask ourselves whether there is something else that could be explaining our patient’s presentation, something that would be more common and more likely to be occurring.”

According to Dr. Smart, who was not involved in Dr. Molloy’s study, the team’s premature diagnostic focus on MIS-C was almost the inverse of what typically happens with KD. “It is usually the case that Kawasaki disease does not enter the differential diagnosis until late in the course of the fever, typically on day 5 or later, when it may have been better to think of it earlier,” he said.

In the second article, Andrea Dean, MD, of the department of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, both in Houston, and colleagues outlined the cases of five patients aged 8-17 years who were hospitalized in May 2020 for suspected MIS-C. They exhibited inflammatory and other concerning indicators but were eventually discharged with a diagnosis of murine typhus.

This flea-borne infection, most commonly reported in the United States in the southeastern Gulf Coast region, Hawaii, and California, is often associated with a triad of fever, rash, and headache.

Cases have been rising in southern Texas, and Dr. Dean and colleagues postulated that school closures and social distancing may have increased exposure as a result of children spending more time outdoors or with pets. “Alternatively, parental concern for SARS-CoV-2 infection could mean children with symptoms are presenting to care and being referred or admitted to the hospital more frequently due to provider concern for MIS-C,” they wrote.
 

Cardiac involvement

The most concerning of the five cases in terms of possible MIS-C, Dr. Dean said in an interview, was that of a 12-year-old boy who had fever for 6 days in association with headache, eczematous rash, dry lips, and conjunctivitis. Laboratory tests showed a mildly elevated C-reactive protein level, hyponatremia, and thrombocytopenia, as well as sterile pyuria and mildly elevated prothrombin time. He was treated empirically with doxycycline, and his fever resolved over the next 24 hours.

An echocardiogram at initial evaluation, however, revealed mild dilation of the left anterior descending and right coronary arteries, which led to the administration of intravenous immunoglobulin and aspirin for atypical KD, in contrast to MIS-C. The authors postulated that mild cardiac involvement in disorders other than MIS-C and KD may be underrecognized.

The lesson from these cases, Dr. Dean and associates concluded, is that hospitalists must maintain a wide differential diagnosis when assessing a child with prolonged fever and evidence of systemic inflammation. The CDC stipulates that a diagnosis of MIS-C requires the absence of a plausible alternative diagnosis.

In addition to common viral, bacterial, and noninfectious disorders, a range of regional endemic rickettsial and parasitic infections must be considered as alternative diagnoses to MIS-C. “Many of these diseases cannot be reliably differentiated from MIS-C on presentation, and as community exposure to SARS-CoV-2 grows, hospitalists should be prepared to admit febrile children with evidence of systemic inflammation for brief observation periods to evaluate for MIS-C,” Dr. Dean’s group wrote. In this context, however, empiric treatment for common or even uncommon infectious diseases may avoid overdiagnosis and overtreatment of MIS-C as well as improve patient outcomes.

“We do have specific MIS-C guidelines at our institution,” Dr. Dean said, “but like all institutions, we are dealing with the broad definition of MIS-C according to the World Health Organization and the CDC, which is really the takeaway from this paper.”
 

More difficult differentiation

Both groups of authors pointed out that, as SARS-CoV-2 spreads throughout a community, a higher percentage of the population will have positive results on antibody testing, and such results will become less useful for differentiating between MIS-C and other conditions.

Despite these series’ cautionary lessons, other experts point to the critical importance of including MIS-C early on in the interest of efficient diagnosis and therapy. “In the cases cited, other pathologies were evaluated for and treated accordingly,” said Kara Gross Margolis, MD, AGAF, an associate professor of pediatrics in the division of pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital,New York. “These papers stress the need for a balance that is important, and all potential diagnoses need to be considered, but MIS-C, due to its potential severe consequences, also needs to be on our differential now.”

In her view, as this new high-morbidity entity becomes more widespread during the pandemic, it will be increasingly important to keep this condition on the diagnostic radar.

Interestingly, in a converse example of diagnostic clouding, Dr. Gross Margolis’s group reported (Gastroenterology. 2020 Oct;159[4]:1571-4.e2) last year on a pediatric case series in which the presence of gastrointestinal symptoms in children with COVID-19–related MIS-C muddied the diagnosis by confusing this potentially severe syndrome with more common and less toxic gastrointestinal infections.

According to Dr. Smart, although the two reports don’t offer evidence for a particular diagnostic practice, they can inform the decision-making process. “It may be that we will have enough evidence shortly to say what the best practice is regarding diagnostic evaluation of possible MIS-C cases,” he said. “Until then, we must remember that common things occur commonly, even during a global pandemic.”

Neither of the two reports received any specific funding. The authors disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Clinical questions: What are the demographics and clinical features of pediatric severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) syndromes, and which admitting demographics and clinical features are predictive of disease severity?

Background: In children, SARS-CoV-2 causes respiratory disease and multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) as well as other clinical manifestations. The authors of this study chose to address the gap of identifying characteristics for severe disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, including respiratory disease, MIS-C and other manifestations.

Study design: Retrospective and prospective cohort analysis of hospitalized children

Setting: Participating hospitals in Tri-State Pediatric COVID-19 Consortium, including hospitals in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Synopsis: The authors identified hospitalized patients 22 years old or younger who had a positive SARS-CoV-2 test or met the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventions’ MIS-C case definition. For comparative analysis, patients were divided into a respiratory disease group (based on the World Health Organization’s criteria for COVID-19), MIS-C group or other group (based on the primary reason for hospitalization).

The authors included 281 patients in the study. 51% of the patients presented with respiratory disease, 25% with MIS-C and 25% with other symptoms, including gastrointestinal, or fever. 51% of all patients were Hispanic and 23% were non-Black Hispanic. The most common pre-existing comorbidities amongst all groups were obesity (34%) and asthma (14%).

Patients with respiratory disease had a median age of 14 years while those with MIS-C had a median age of 7 years. Patients more commonly identified as non-Hispanic Black in the MIS-C group vs the respiratory group (35% vs. 18%). Obesity and medical complexity were more prevalent in the respiratory group relative to the MIS-C group. 75% of patients with MIS-C had gastrointestinal symptoms. 44% of respiratory patients had a chest radiograph with bilateral infiltrates on admission, and 18% or respiratory patients required invasive mechanical ventilation. The most common complications in the respiratory group were acute respiratory distress syndrome (17%) and acute kidney injury (11%), whereas shock (35%) and cardiac dysfunction (25%) were the most common complications in the MIS-C group. The median length of stay for all patients was 4 days (IQR 2-8 days).

Patients with MIS-C were more likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) but all deaths (7 patients) occurred in the respiratory group. 40% of patients with respiratory disease, 56% of patients with MIS-C, and 6% of other patients met the authors’ definition of severe disease (ICU admission > 48 hours). For the respiratory group, younger age, obesity, increasing white blood cell count, hypoxia, and bilateral infiltrates on chest radiograph were independent predictors of severe disease based on multivariate analyses. For the MIS-C group, lower absolute lymphocyte count and increasing CRP at admission were independent predictors of severity.

Bottom line: Mortality in pediatric patients is low. Ethnicity and race were not predictive of disease severity in this model, even though 51% of the patients studied were Hispanic and 23% were non-Hispanic Black. Severity of illness for patients with respiratory disease was found to be associated with younger age, obesity, increasing white blood cell count, hypoxia, and bilateral infiltrates on chest radiograph. Severity of illness in patients with MIS-C was associated with lower absolute lymphocyte count and increasing CRP.

Citation: Fernandes DM, et al. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 clinical syndromes and predictors of disease severity in hospitalized children and youth. J Pediatr. 2020 Nov 14;S0022-3476(20):31393-7. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2020.11.016.

Dr. Kumar is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University and a pediatric hospitalist at Cleveland Clinic Children’s. She is the pediatric editor of The Hospitalist.

Clinical questions: What are the demographics and clinical features of pediatric severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) syndromes, and which admitting demographics and clinical features are predictive of disease severity?

Background: In children, SARS-CoV-2 causes respiratory disease and multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) as well as other clinical manifestations. The authors of this study chose to address the gap of identifying characteristics for severe disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, including respiratory disease, MIS-C and other manifestations.

Study design: Retrospective and prospective cohort analysis of hospitalized children

Setting: Participating hospitals in Tri-State Pediatric COVID-19 Consortium, including hospitals in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Synopsis: The authors identified hospitalized patients 22 years old or younger who had a positive SARS-CoV-2 test or met the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventions’ MIS-C case definition. For comparative analysis, patients were divided into a respiratory disease group (based on the World Health Organization’s criteria for COVID-19), MIS-C group or other group (based on the primary reason for hospitalization).

The authors included 281 patients in the study. 51% of the patients presented with respiratory disease, 25% with MIS-C and 25% with other symptoms, including gastrointestinal, or fever. 51% of all patients were Hispanic and 23% were non-Black Hispanic. The most common pre-existing comorbidities amongst all groups were obesity (34%) and asthma (14%).

Patients with respiratory disease had a median age of 14 years while those with MIS-C had a median age of 7 years. Patients more commonly identified as non-Hispanic Black in the MIS-C group vs the respiratory group (35% vs. 18%). Obesity and medical complexity were more prevalent in the respiratory group relative to the MIS-C group. 75% of patients with MIS-C had gastrointestinal symptoms. 44% of respiratory patients had a chest radiograph with bilateral infiltrates on admission, and 18% or respiratory patients required invasive mechanical ventilation. The most common complications in the respiratory group were acute respiratory distress syndrome (17%) and acute kidney injury (11%), whereas shock (35%) and cardiac dysfunction (25%) were the most common complications in the MIS-C group. The median length of stay for all patients was 4 days (IQR 2-8 days).

Patients with MIS-C were more likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) but all deaths (7 patients) occurred in the respiratory group. 40% of patients with respiratory disease, 56% of patients with MIS-C, and 6% of other patients met the authors’ definition of severe disease (ICU admission > 48 hours). For the respiratory group, younger age, obesity, increasing white blood cell count, hypoxia, and bilateral infiltrates on chest radiograph were independent predictors of severe disease based on multivariate analyses. For the MIS-C group, lower absolute lymphocyte count and increasing CRP at admission were independent predictors of severity.

Bottom line: Mortality in pediatric patients is low. Ethnicity and race were not predictive of disease severity in this model, even though 51% of the patients studied were Hispanic and 23% were non-Hispanic Black. Severity of illness for patients with respiratory disease was found to be associated with younger age, obesity, increasing white blood cell count, hypoxia, and bilateral infiltrates on chest radiograph. Severity of illness in patients with MIS-C was associated with lower absolute lymphocyte count and increasing CRP.

Citation: Fernandes DM, et al. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 clinical syndromes and predictors of disease severity in hospitalized children and youth. J Pediatr. 2020 Nov 14;S0022-3476(20):31393-7. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2020.11.016.

Dr. Kumar is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University and a pediatric hospitalist at Cleveland Clinic Children’s. She is the pediatric editor of The Hospitalist.

Clinical questions: What are the demographics and clinical features of pediatric severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) syndromes, and which admitting demographics and clinical features are predictive of disease severity?

Background: In children, SARS-CoV-2 causes respiratory disease and multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) as well as other clinical manifestations. The authors of this study chose to address the gap of identifying characteristics for severe disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, including respiratory disease, MIS-C and other manifestations.

Study design: Retrospective and prospective cohort analysis of hospitalized children

Setting: Participating hospitals in Tri-State Pediatric COVID-19 Consortium, including hospitals in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Synopsis: The authors identified hospitalized patients 22 years old or younger who had a positive SARS-CoV-2 test or met the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventions’ MIS-C case definition. For comparative analysis, patients were divided into a respiratory disease group (based on the World Health Organization’s criteria for COVID-19), MIS-C group or other group (based on the primary reason for hospitalization).

The authors included 281 patients in the study. 51% of the patients presented with respiratory disease, 25% with MIS-C and 25% with other symptoms, including gastrointestinal, or fever. 51% of all patients were Hispanic and 23% were non-Black Hispanic. The most common pre-existing comorbidities amongst all groups were obesity (34%) and asthma (14%).

Patients with respiratory disease had a median age of 14 years while those with MIS-C had a median age of 7 years. Patients more commonly identified as non-Hispanic Black in the MIS-C group vs the respiratory group (35% vs. 18%). Obesity and medical complexity were more prevalent in the respiratory group relative to the MIS-C group. 75% of patients with MIS-C had gastrointestinal symptoms. 44% of respiratory patients had a chest radiograph with bilateral infiltrates on admission, and 18% or respiratory patients required invasive mechanical ventilation. The most common complications in the respiratory group were acute respiratory distress syndrome (17%) and acute kidney injury (11%), whereas shock (35%) and cardiac dysfunction (25%) were the most common complications in the MIS-C group. The median length of stay for all patients was 4 days (IQR 2-8 days).

Patients with MIS-C were more likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) but all deaths (7 patients) occurred in the respiratory group. 40% of patients with respiratory disease, 56% of patients with MIS-C, and 6% of other patients met the authors’ definition of severe disease (ICU admission > 48 hours). For the respiratory group, younger age, obesity, increasing white blood cell count, hypoxia, and bilateral infiltrates on chest radiograph were independent predictors of severe disease based on multivariate analyses. For the MIS-C group, lower absolute lymphocyte count and increasing CRP at admission were independent predictors of severity.

Bottom line: Mortality in pediatric patients is low. Ethnicity and race were not predictive of disease severity in this model, even though 51% of the patients studied were Hispanic and 23% were non-Hispanic Black. Severity of illness for patients with respiratory disease was found to be associated with younger age, obesity, increasing white blood cell count, hypoxia, and bilateral infiltrates on chest radiograph. Severity of illness in patients with MIS-C was associated with lower absolute lymphocyte count and increasing CRP.

Citation: Fernandes DM, et al. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 clinical syndromes and predictors of disease severity in hospitalized children and youth. J Pediatr. 2020 Nov 14;S0022-3476(20):31393-7. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2020.11.016.

Dr. Kumar is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University and a pediatric hospitalist at Cleveland Clinic Children’s. She is the pediatric editor of The Hospitalist.

Asymptomatic screening of cancer patients receiving anticancer therapy detected a very low rate of COVID-19 in a retrospective study.

Of more than 2,000 patients, less than 1% were found to be COVID-19 positive on asymptomatic screening, an investigator reported at the AACR Virtual Meeting: COVID-19 and Cancer (Abstract S09-04).

While several models have been proposed to screen for COVID-19 among cancer patients, the optimal strategy remains unknown, said investigator Justin A. Shaya, MD, of the University of California, San Diego.

The most commonly used approach is symptom/exposure-based screening and testing. However, other models have combined this method with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for asymptomatic high-risk patients (such as those undergoing bone marrow transplant, receiving chemotherapy, or with hematologic malignancies) or with PCR testing for all asymptomatic cancer patients.

Dr. Shaya’s institution implemented a novel COVID-19 screening protocol for cancer patients receiving infusional anticancer therapy in May 2020.

The protocol required SARS-CoV-2 PCR testing for asymptomatic patients 24-96 hours prior to infusion. However, testing was only required before the administration of anticancer therapy. Infusion visits for supportive care interventions did not require previsit testing.

The researchers retrospectively analyzed data from patients with active cancer receiving infusional anticancer therapy who had at least one asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 PCR test between June 1 and Dec. 1, 2020. The primary outcome was the rate of COVID-19 positivity among asymptomatic patients.

Results

Among 2,202 patients identified, 21 (0.95%) were found to be COVID-19 positive on asymptomatic screening. Most of these patients (90.5%) had solid tumors, but two (9.5%) had hematologic malignancies.

With respect to treatment, 16 patients (76.2%) received cytotoxic chemotherapy, 2 (9.5%) received targeted therapy, 1 (4.7%) received immunotherapy, and 2 (9.5%) were on a clinical trial.

At a median follow-up of 174 days from a positive PCR test (range, 55-223 days), only two patients (9.5%) developed COVID-related symptoms. Both patients had acute leukemia, and one required hospitalization for COVID-related complications.

In the COVID-19–positive cohort, 20 (95.2%) patients had their anticancer therapy delayed or deferred, with a median delay of 21 days (range, 7-77 days).

In the overall cohort, an additional 26 patients (1.2%) developed symptomatic COVID-19 during the study period.

“These results are particularly interesting because they come from a high-quality center that sees a large number of patients,” said Solange Peters, MD, PhD, of the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), who was not involved in this study.

“As they suggest, it is still a debate on how efficient routine screening is, asking the question whether we’re really detecting COVID-19 infection in our patients. Of course, it depends on the time and environment,” Dr. Peters added.

Dr. Shaya acknowledged that the small sample size was a key limitation of the study. Thus, the results may not be generalizable to other regions.

“One of the most striking things is that asymptomatic patients suffer very few consequences of COVID-19 infection, except for patients with hematologic malignancies,” Dr. Shaya said during a live discussion. “The majority of our patients had solid tumors and failed to develop any signs/symptoms of COVID infection.

“Routine screening provides a lot of security, and our institution is big enough to allow for it, and it seems our teams enjoy the fact of knowing the COVID status for each patient,” he continued.

Dr. Shaya and Dr. Peters disclosed no conflicts of interest. No funding sources were reported in the presentation.

Asymptomatic screening of cancer patients receiving anticancer therapy detected a very low rate of COVID-19 in a retrospective study.

Of more than 2,000 patients, less than 1% were found to be COVID-19 positive on asymptomatic screening, an investigator reported at the AACR Virtual Meeting: COVID-19 and Cancer (Abstract S09-04).

While several models have been proposed to screen for COVID-19 among cancer patients, the optimal strategy remains unknown, said investigator Justin A. Shaya, MD, of the University of California, San Diego.

The most commonly used approach is symptom/exposure-based screening and testing. However, other models have combined this method with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for asymptomatic high-risk patients (such as those undergoing bone marrow transplant, receiving chemotherapy, or with hematologic malignancies) or with PCR testing for all asymptomatic cancer patients.

Dr. Shaya’s institution implemented a novel COVID-19 screening protocol for cancer patients receiving infusional anticancer therapy in May 2020.

The protocol required SARS-CoV-2 PCR testing for asymptomatic patients 24-96 hours prior to infusion. However, testing was only required before the administration of anticancer therapy. Infusion visits for supportive care interventions did not require previsit testing.

The researchers retrospectively analyzed data from patients with active cancer receiving infusional anticancer therapy who had at least one asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 PCR test between June 1 and Dec. 1, 2020. The primary outcome was the rate of COVID-19 positivity among asymptomatic patients.

Results

Among 2,202 patients identified, 21 (0.95%) were found to be COVID-19 positive on asymptomatic screening. Most of these patients (90.5%) had solid tumors, but two (9.5%) had hematologic malignancies.

With respect to treatment, 16 patients (76.2%) received cytotoxic chemotherapy, 2 (9.5%) received targeted therapy, 1 (4.7%) received immunotherapy, and 2 (9.5%) were on a clinical trial.

At a median follow-up of 174 days from a positive PCR test (range, 55-223 days), only two patients (9.5%) developed COVID-related symptoms. Both patients had acute leukemia, and one required hospitalization for COVID-related complications.

In the COVID-19–positive cohort, 20 (95.2%) patients had their anticancer therapy delayed or deferred, with a median delay of 21 days (range, 7-77 days).

In the overall cohort, an additional 26 patients (1.2%) developed symptomatic COVID-19 during the study period.

“These results are particularly interesting because they come from a high-quality center that sees a large number of patients,” said Solange Peters, MD, PhD, of the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), who was not involved in this study.

“As they suggest, it is still a debate on how efficient routine screening is, asking the question whether we’re really detecting COVID-19 infection in our patients. Of course, it depends on the time and environment,” Dr. Peters added.

Dr. Shaya acknowledged that the small sample size was a key limitation of the study. Thus, the results may not be generalizable to other regions.

“One of the most striking things is that asymptomatic patients suffer very few consequences of COVID-19 infection, except for patients with hematologic malignancies,” Dr. Shaya said during a live discussion. “The majority of our patients had solid tumors and failed to develop any signs/symptoms of COVID infection.

“Routine screening provides a lot of security, and our institution is big enough to allow for it, and it seems our teams enjoy the fact of knowing the COVID status for each patient,” he continued.

Dr. Shaya and Dr. Peters disclosed no conflicts of interest. No funding sources were reported in the presentation.

Asymptomatic screening of cancer patients receiving anticancer therapy detected a very low rate of COVID-19 in a retrospective study.

Of more than 2,000 patients, less than 1% were found to be COVID-19 positive on asymptomatic screening, an investigator reported at the AACR Virtual Meeting: COVID-19 and Cancer (Abstract S09-04).

While several models have been proposed to screen for COVID-19 among cancer patients, the optimal strategy remains unknown, said investigator Justin A. Shaya, MD, of the University of California, San Diego.

The most commonly used approach is symptom/exposure-based screening and testing. However, other models have combined this method with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for asymptomatic high-risk patients (such as those undergoing bone marrow transplant, receiving chemotherapy, or with hematologic malignancies) or with PCR testing for all asymptomatic cancer patients.

Dr. Shaya’s institution implemented a novel COVID-19 screening protocol for cancer patients receiving infusional anticancer therapy in May 2020.

The protocol required SARS-CoV-2 PCR testing for asymptomatic patients 24-96 hours prior to infusion. However, testing was only required before the administration of anticancer therapy. Infusion visits for supportive care interventions did not require previsit testing.

The researchers retrospectively analyzed data from patients with active cancer receiving infusional anticancer therapy who had at least one asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 PCR test between June 1 and Dec. 1, 2020. The primary outcome was the rate of COVID-19 positivity among asymptomatic patients.

Results

Among 2,202 patients identified, 21 (0.95%) were found to be COVID-19 positive on asymptomatic screening. Most of these patients (90.5%) had solid tumors, but two (9.5%) had hematologic malignancies.

With respect to treatment, 16 patients (76.2%) received cytotoxic chemotherapy, 2 (9.5%) received targeted therapy, 1 (4.7%) received immunotherapy, and 2 (9.5%) were on a clinical trial.

At a median follow-up of 174 days from a positive PCR test (range, 55-223 days), only two patients (9.5%) developed COVID-related symptoms. Both patients had acute leukemia, and one required hospitalization for COVID-related complications.

In the COVID-19–positive cohort, 20 (95.2%) patients had their anticancer therapy delayed or deferred, with a median delay of 21 days (range, 7-77 days).

In the overall cohort, an additional 26 patients (1.2%) developed symptomatic COVID-19 during the study period.

“These results are particularly interesting because they come from a high-quality center that sees a large number of patients,” said Solange Peters, MD, PhD, of the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), who was not involved in this study.

“As they suggest, it is still a debate on how efficient routine screening is, asking the question whether we’re really detecting COVID-19 infection in our patients. Of course, it depends on the time and environment,” Dr. Peters added.

Dr. Shaya acknowledged that the small sample size was a key limitation of the study. Thus, the results may not be generalizable to other regions.

“One of the most striking things is that asymptomatic patients suffer very few consequences of COVID-19 infection, except for patients with hematologic malignancies,” Dr. Shaya said during a live discussion. “The majority of our patients had solid tumors and failed to develop any signs/symptoms of COVID infection.

“Routine screening provides a lot of security, and our institution is big enough to allow for it, and it seems our teams enjoy the fact of knowing the COVID status for each patient,” he continued.

Dr. Shaya and Dr. Peters disclosed no conflicts of interest. No funding sources were reported in the presentation.

States that implemented mask mandates in 2020 saw a decline in the growth of COVID-19 hospitalizations between March and October 2020, according to a new study published Feb. 5 in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Hospitalization growth rates declined by 5.5 percentage points for adults between ages 18-64 about 3 weeks after the mandates were implemented, compared with climbing growth rates in the 4 weeks before mandates.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said she was pleased to see the results, but that it’s “too early” to tell whether President Joe Biden’s recent mask orders have had an effect on cases and hospitalizations in 2021.

“We’re going to be watching the mask data very carefully,” she said during a news briefing with the White House COVID-19 Response Team on Feb. 5. “I think it’s probably still a bit too early to tell, but I’m encouraged with the decrease in case rates right now.”

In another study published Feb. 5 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, trained observers tracked mask use at six universities with mask mandates between September and November 2020. Overall, observers reported that about 92% of people wore masks correctly indoors, which varied based on the type of mask.

About 97% of people used N95 masks correctly, compared with 92% who used cloth masks, and 79% who used bandanas, scarves, or neck gaiters. Cloth masks were most common, and bandanas and scarves were least common.

The Biden administration is considering whether to send masks directly to American households to encourage people to wear them, according to NBC News. The White House COVID-19 Response Team is debating the logistics of mailing out masks, including how many to send and what the mask material would be, the news outlet reported.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers reissued a new statewide mask mandate on Feb. 4, just an hour after the Republican-controlled legislature voted to repeal his previous mandate, according to The Associated Press. Gov. Evers said his priority is to keep people safe and that wearing a mask is the easiest way to do so.

“If the legislature keeps playing politics and we don’t keep wearing masks, we’re going to see more preventable deaths,” he said. “It’s going to take even longer to get our state and our economy back on track.”

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

States that implemented mask mandates in 2020 saw a decline in the growth of COVID-19 hospitalizations between March and October 2020, according to a new study published Feb. 5 in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Hospitalization growth rates declined by 5.5 percentage points for adults between ages 18-64 about 3 weeks after the mandates were implemented, compared with climbing growth rates in the 4 weeks before mandates.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said she was pleased to see the results, but that it’s “too early” to tell whether President Joe Biden’s recent mask orders have had an effect on cases and hospitalizations in 2021.

“We’re going to be watching the mask data very carefully,” she said during a news briefing with the White House COVID-19 Response Team on Feb. 5. “I think it’s probably still a bit too early to tell, but I’m encouraged with the decrease in case rates right now.”

In another study published Feb. 5 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, trained observers tracked mask use at six universities with mask mandates between September and November 2020. Overall, observers reported that about 92% of people wore masks correctly indoors, which varied based on the type of mask.

About 97% of people used N95 masks correctly, compared with 92% who used cloth masks, and 79% who used bandanas, scarves, or neck gaiters. Cloth masks were most common, and bandanas and scarves were least common.

The Biden administration is considering whether to send masks directly to American households to encourage people to wear them, according to NBC News. The White House COVID-19 Response Team is debating the logistics of mailing out masks, including how many to send and what the mask material would be, the news outlet reported.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers reissued a new statewide mask mandate on Feb. 4, just an hour after the Republican-controlled legislature voted to repeal his previous mandate, according to The Associated Press. Gov. Evers said his priority is to keep people safe and that wearing a mask is the easiest way to do so.

“If the legislature keeps playing politics and we don’t keep wearing masks, we’re going to see more preventable deaths,” he said. “It’s going to take even longer to get our state and our economy back on track.”

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

States that implemented mask mandates in 2020 saw a decline in the growth of COVID-19 hospitalizations between March and October 2020, according to a new study published Feb. 5 in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Hospitalization growth rates declined by 5.5 percentage points for adults between ages 18-64 about 3 weeks after the mandates were implemented, compared with climbing growth rates in the 4 weeks before mandates.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said she was pleased to see the results, but that it’s “too early” to tell whether President Joe Biden’s recent mask orders have had an effect on cases and hospitalizations in 2021.

“We’re going to be watching the mask data very carefully,” she said during a news briefing with the White House COVID-19 Response Team on Feb. 5. “I think it’s probably still a bit too early to tell, but I’m encouraged with the decrease in case rates right now.”

In another study published Feb. 5 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, trained observers tracked mask use at six universities with mask mandates between September and November 2020. Overall, observers reported that about 92% of people wore masks correctly indoors, which varied based on the type of mask.

About 97% of people used N95 masks correctly, compared with 92% who used cloth masks, and 79% who used bandanas, scarves, or neck gaiters. Cloth masks were most common, and bandanas and scarves were least common.

The Biden administration is considering whether to send masks directly to American households to encourage people to wear them, according to NBC News. The White House COVID-19 Response Team is debating the logistics of mailing out masks, including how many to send and what the mask material would be, the news outlet reported.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers reissued a new statewide mask mandate on Feb. 4, just an hour after the Republican-controlled legislature voted to repeal his previous mandate, according to The Associated Press. Gov. Evers said his priority is to keep people safe and that wearing a mask is the easiest way to do so.

“If the legislature keeps playing politics and we don’t keep wearing masks, we’re going to see more preventable deaths,” he said. “It’s going to take even longer to get our state and our economy back on track.”

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

Best practices for managing cancer outpatients continue to evolve during the COVID-19 pandemic, with recent innovations in technology, operations, and communication.

“We’ve tried a lot of new things to ensure optimal care for our patients,” said Tiffany A. Traina, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York. “We need to effectively utilize all resources at our disposal to keep in touch with our patients during this time.”

Dr. Traina described the approach to outpatient management used at MSKCC during a presentation at the AACR Virtual Meeting: COVID-19 and Cancer.
 

Four guiding principles

MSKCC has established four guiding principles on how to manage cancer patients during the pandemic: openness, safety, technology, and staffing.

Openness ensures that decisions are guided by clinical priorities to provide optimal patient care and allow for prioritization of clinical research and education, Dr. Traina said.

The safety of patients and staff is of the utmost importance, she added. To ensure safety in the context of outpatient care, several operational levers were developed, including COVID surge planning, universal masking and personal protective equipment guidelines, remote work, clinical levers, and new dashboards and communications.

Dr. Traina said data analytics and dashboards have been key technological tools used to support evidence-based decision-making and deliver care remotely for patients during the pandemic.

Staffing resources have also shifted to support demand at different health system locations.
 

Screening, cohorting, and telemedicine

One measure MSKCC adopted is the MSK Engage Questionnaire, a COVID-19 screening questionnaire assigned to every patient with a scheduled outpatient visit. After completing the questionnaire, patients receive a response denoting whether they need to come into the outpatient setting.

On the staffing side, clinic coordinators prepare appointments accordingly, based on the risk level for each patient.

“We also try to cohort COVID-positive patients into particular areas within the outpatient setting,” Dr. Traina explained. “In addition, we control flow through ambulatory care locations by having separate patient entrances and use other tools to make flow as efficient as possible.”

On the technology side, interactive dashboards are being used to model traffic through different buildings.

“These data and analytics are useful for operational engineering, answering questions such as (1) Are there backups in chemotherapy? and (2) Are patients seeing one particular physician?” Dr. Traina explained. “One important key takeaway is the importance of frequently communicating simple messages through multiple mechanisms, including signage, websites, and dedicated resources.”

Other key technological measures are leveraging telemedicine to convert inpatient appointments to a virtual setting, as well as developing and deploying a system for centralized outpatient follow-up of COVID-19-positive patients.

“We saw a 3,000% increase in telemedicine utilization from February 2020 to June 2020,” Dr. Traina reported. “In a given month, we have approximately 230,000 outpatient visits, and a substantial proportion of these are now done via telemedicine.”

Dr. Traina also noted that multiple organizations have released guidelines addressing when to resume anticancer therapy in patients who have been COVID-19 positive. Adherence is important, as unnecessary COVID-19 testing may delay cancer therapy and is not recommended.

During a live discussion, Louis P. Voigt, MD, of MSKCC, said Dr. Traina’s presentation provided “a lot of good ideas for other institutions who may be facing similar challenges.”

Dr. Traina and Dr. Voigt disclosed no conflicts of interest. No funding sources were reported.

Best practices for managing cancer outpatients continue to evolve during the COVID-19 pandemic, with recent innovations in technology, operations, and communication.

“We’ve tried a lot of new things to ensure optimal care for our patients,” said Tiffany A. Traina, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York. “We need to effectively utilize all resources at our disposal to keep in touch with our patients during this time.”

Dr. Traina described the approach to outpatient management used at MSKCC during a presentation at the AACR Virtual Meeting: COVID-19 and Cancer.
 

Four guiding principles

MSKCC has established four guiding principles on how to manage cancer patients during the pandemic: openness, safety, technology, and staffing.

Openness ensures that decisions are guided by clinical priorities to provide optimal patient care and allow for prioritization of clinical research and education, Dr. Traina said.

The safety of patients and staff is of the utmost importance, she added. To ensure safety in the context of outpatient care, several operational levers were developed, including COVID surge planning, universal masking and personal protective equipment guidelines, remote work, clinical levers, and new dashboards and communications.

Dr. Traina said data analytics and dashboards have been key technological tools used to support evidence-based decision-making and deliver care remotely for patients during the pandemic.

Staffing resources have also shifted to support demand at different health system locations.
 

Screening, cohorting, and telemedicine

One measure MSKCC adopted is the MSK Engage Questionnaire, a COVID-19 screening questionnaire assigned to every patient with a scheduled outpatient visit. After completing the questionnaire, patients receive a response denoting whether they need to come into the outpatient setting.

On the staffing side, clinic coordinators prepare appointments accordingly, based on the risk level for each patient.

“We also try to cohort COVID-positive patients into particular areas within the outpatient setting,” Dr. Traina explained. “In addition, we control flow through ambulatory care locations by having separate patient entrances and use other tools to make flow as efficient as possible.”

On the technology side, interactive dashboards are being used to model traffic through different buildings.

“These data and analytics are useful for operational engineering, answering questions such as (1) Are there backups in chemotherapy? and (2) Are patients seeing one particular physician?” Dr. Traina explained. “One important key takeaway is the importance of frequently communicating simple messages through multiple mechanisms, including signage, websites, and dedicated resources.”

Other key technological measures are leveraging telemedicine to convert inpatient appointments to a virtual setting, as well as developing and deploying a system for centralized outpatient follow-up of COVID-19-positive patients.

“We saw a 3,000% increase in telemedicine utilization from February 2020 to June 2020,” Dr. Traina reported. “In a given month, we have approximately 230,000 outpatient visits, and a substantial proportion of these are now done via telemedicine.”

Dr. Traina also noted that multiple organizations have released guidelines addressing when to resume anticancer therapy in patients who have been COVID-19 positive. Adherence is important, as unnecessary COVID-19 testing may delay cancer therapy and is not recommended.

During a live discussion, Louis P. Voigt, MD, of MSKCC, said Dr. Traina’s presentation provided “a lot of good ideas for other institutions who may be facing similar challenges.”

Dr. Traina and Dr. Voigt disclosed no conflicts of interest. No funding sources were reported.

Best practices for managing cancer outpatients continue to evolve during the COVID-19 pandemic, with recent innovations in technology, operations, and communication.

“We’ve tried a lot of new things to ensure optimal care for our patients,” said Tiffany A. Traina, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York. “We need to effectively utilize all resources at our disposal to keep in touch with our patients during this time.”

Dr. Traina described the approach to outpatient management used at MSKCC during a presentation at the AACR Virtual Meeting: COVID-19 and Cancer.
 

Four guiding principles

MSKCC has established four guiding principles on how to manage cancer patients during the pandemic: openness, safety, technology, and staffing.

Openness ensures that decisions are guided by clinical priorities to provide optimal patient care and allow for prioritization of clinical research and education, Dr. Traina said.

The safety of patients and staff is of the utmost importance, she added. To ensure safety in the context of outpatient care, several operational levers were developed, including COVID surge planning, universal masking and personal protective equipment guidelines, remote work, clinical levers, and new dashboards and communications.

Dr. Traina said data analytics and dashboards have been key technological tools used to support evidence-based decision-making and deliver care remotely for patients during the pandemic.

Staffing resources have also shifted to support demand at different health system locations.
 

Screening, cohorting, and telemedicine

One measure MSKCC adopted is the MSK Engage Questionnaire, a COVID-19 screening questionnaire assigned to every patient with a scheduled outpatient visit. After completing the questionnaire, patients receive a response denoting whether they need to come into the outpatient setting.

On the staffing side, clinic coordinators prepare appointments accordingly, based on the risk level for each patient.

“We also try to cohort COVID-positive patients into particular areas within the outpatient setting,” Dr. Traina explained. “In addition, we control flow through ambulatory care locations by having separate patient entrances and use other tools to make flow as efficient as possible.”

On the technology side, interactive dashboards are being used to model traffic through different buildings.

“These data and analytics are useful for operational engineering, answering questions such as (1) Are there backups in chemotherapy? and (2) Are patients seeing one particular physician?” Dr. Traina explained. “One important key takeaway is the importance of frequently communicating simple messages through multiple mechanisms, including signage, websites, and dedicated resources.”

Other key technological measures are leveraging telemedicine to convert inpatient appointments to a virtual setting, as well as developing and deploying a system for centralized outpatient follow-up of COVID-19-positive patients.

“We saw a 3,000% increase in telemedicine utilization from February 2020 to June 2020,” Dr. Traina reported. “In a given month, we have approximately 230,000 outpatient visits, and a substantial proportion of these are now done via telemedicine.”

Dr. Traina also noted that multiple organizations have released guidelines addressing when to resume anticancer therapy in patients who have been COVID-19 positive. Adherence is important, as unnecessary COVID-19 testing may delay cancer therapy and is not recommended.

During a live discussion, Louis P. Voigt, MD, of MSKCC, said Dr. Traina’s presentation provided “a lot of good ideas for other institutions who may be facing similar challenges.”

Dr. Traina and Dr. Voigt disclosed no conflicts of interest. No funding sources were reported.

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) COVID-19 vaccine allocation plan showcases several lessons for government and health care leaders in planning for future pandemics.¹ Many state governments—underresourced and overwhelmed with other COVID-19 demands—have struggled to get COVID-19 vaccines into the arms of their residents.² In contrast, the VHA was able to mobilize early to identify vaccine allocation guidelines and proactively prepare facilities to vaccinate VHA staff and veterans as soon as vaccines were approved under Emergency Use Authorization by the US Food and Drug Administration.^3,4

In August 2020, VHA formed a COVID-19 Vaccine Integrated Project Team, composed of 6 subgroups: communications, distribution, education, measurement, policy, prioritization, and vaccine safety. The National Center for Ethics in Health Care weighed in on the ethical justification for the developed vaccination risk stratification framework, which was informed by, but not identical to, that recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.⁵

Prioritizing who gets early access to a potentially life-saving vaccine weighs heavily on those leaders charged with making such decisions. The ethics of scarce resource allocation and triage protocols that may be necessary in a pandemic are often in tension with the patient-centered clinical ethics that health care practitioners (HCPs) encounter. HCPs require assistance in appreciating the ethical rationale for this shift in focus from the preference of the individual to the common good. The same is true for the risk stratification criteria required when there is not sufficient vaccine for all those who could benefit from immunization. Decisions must be transparent to ensure widespread acceptance and trust in the vaccination process. The ethical reasoning and values that are the basis for allocation criteria must be clearly, compassionately, and consistently communicated to the public, as outlined below. Ethical questions or concerns involve a conflict between core values: one of the central tasks of ethical analysis is to identify the available ethical options to resolve value conflicts. Several ethical frameworks for vaccine allocation are available—each balances and weighs the primary values of equity, dignity, beneficence, and utility slightly differently.⁶

For example, utilitarian ethics looks to produce the most good and avoid the most harm for the greatest number of people. Within this framework, there can be different notions of “good,” for example, saving the most lives, the most life years, the most quality life years, or the lives of those who have more life “innings” ahead. The approach of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) focuses on saving the most lives in combination with avoiding suffering from serious illness, minimizing contagion, and preserving the essential workforce. Frameworks that give primacy to 1 notion of the good (ie, saving the most lives) may deprioritize other beneficial outcomes, such as allowing earlier return to work, school, and leisure activities that many find integral to human flourishing. Other ethical theories and principles may be used to support various allocation frameworks. For example, a pragmatic ethics approach might emphasize the importance of adapting the approach based on the evolving science and innovation surrounding COVID-19. Having more than 1 ethically defensible approach is common; the goal in ethics work is to be open to diversity of thought and reflect on the strength of one’s reasoning in resolving a core values conflict. We identify 2 central tenets of pandemic ethics that inform vaccine allocation.

1. Pandemic Ethics Requires Proactive Planning and Reevaluation of Continually Evolving Facts

There is an oft quoted saying among bioethicists: “Good ethics begins with good facts.” One obvious challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic has been the difficulty accessing up-to-date facts to inform decision making. If a main goal of a vaccination plan is to minimize the incidence of serious or fatal COVID-19 disease and contagion, myriad data points are needed to identify the best way to do this. For example, if 2 doses of the same vaccine are needed, this impacts the logistics of identifying, inviting, and scheduling eligible individuals and staffing vaccine clinics as well as ensuring that sufficient personal protective equipment and rescue equipment/medication are available to treat allergic reactions. If the adverse effects of vaccines lead to staff absenteeism or vaccine hesitancy, this needs to be factored into logistics.⁷ Tailored messaging is important to reduce appointment no-shows and vaccine nonadopters.⁸ Transportation to vaccination sites is a relevant factor: how a vaccine is stored, thawed, and reconstituted and its shelf life impacts whether it can be transported after thawing and what must be provided on site.

Consideration of the multifaceted factors influencing a successful vaccination campaign requires proactive planning and the readiness to pivot when new information is revealed. For example, vaccine appointment no-shows should be anticipated along with a fair process for allocating unused vaccine that would otherwise be wasted. This is an example of responsible stewardship of a scarce and life-saving resource. A higher than anticipated no-show rate would require revisiting a facility’s approach to ensuring that waste is avoided while the process is perceived to be fair and transparent. Ethical theories and principles cannot do all the work here; mindful attention to detail and proactive, informed planning are critical. Fortunately, the VA is well resourced in this domain, whereas many state health departments floundered in their response, causing unnecessary vaccination delays.⁹

2. Utility: Necessary But Insufficient

Most ethical approaches recognize to some extent that seeking good and minimizing harm is of value. However, a strictly utilitarian approach is insufficient to address the core values in conflict surrounding how best to allocate limited doses of COVID-19 vaccine. For example, some may argue that prioritizing the elderly or those in long-term care facilities like VA’s community living centers because they have the highest COVID-19 mortality rate produces less net benefit than prioritizing younger veterans with comorbidities or certain higher risk essential workers. There are 2 important points to make here.

First, the VHA vaccination plan balances utility with other ethical principles, namely, treating people with equal concern, and addressing health inequities, including a focus on justice and valuing the worth and dignity of each person. Rather than giving everyone an equal chance via lottery, the prioritization plan recognizes that some people have greater need or would stand to better mitigate viral contagion and preserve the essential workforce if they were vaccinated earlier. However, the principle of justice requires that efforts are made to treat like cases the same to avoid perceptions of bias, and to demonstrate respect for the dignity of each individual by way of promoting a fair vaccination process.

This requires transparency, consistency, and delivery of respectful and accurate communication. For example, the VA recognizes that lifetime exposure to social injustice produces health inequities that make Black, Hispanic, and Native American persons more susceptible to contracting COVID-19 and suffering serious or fatal illness. The approach to addressing this inequity is by giving priority to those with higher risk factors. Again, this is an example of blending and balancing ethical principles of utility and justice—that is, recognizing and remedying social injustice is of value both because it will help achieve better outcomes for persons of color and because it is inherently worthwhile to oppose injustice.

However, contrary to some news reports, the VHA approach does not allocate by race/ethnicity alone, as it does by age.^10,11 Doing so would present logistical challenges—for example, race/ethnicity is not an objective classification as is age, and reconciling individuals’ self-reports could create confusion or chaos that is antithetical to a fair, streamlined vaccination program. Putting veterans of color at the front of the vaccination line could backfire by amplifying worries that they are being exposed to vaccine that is not fully tested (a common contributor to vaccine hesitancy, particularly among communities of color familiar with prior exploitation and abuse in the name of science).

Discriminating based on race/ethnicity alone in the spirit of achieving equity would be precedent setting for the VA and would require a strong ethical justification. The decision to prioritize for vaccine based on risk factors strives to achieve this balance of equity and utility, as it encompasses VA staff and veterans of color by way of their status as essential workers or those with comorbidities. However, it is important to address race-based access barriers and vaccine hesitancy to satisfy the equity demands. This effort is underway (eg, engaging community champions and developing tailored educational resources to reach diverse communities).

In addition, pragmatic ethics recognizes that an overly granular, complicated allocation plan would be inefficient to implement. While it might be true that some veterans who are aged < 65 years may be at higher risk from COVID-19 than some elderly veterans, achieving the goals of fairness and transparency requires establishing a vaccine prioritization plan that is both ethically defensible and feasibly implementable (ie, achieves its goal of getting “needles into arms”). For example, veterans aged ≥ 65 years may be invited to schedule their vaccination before younger veterans, but any veteran may be accepted “on-call” for vaccine appointment no-shows via first-come, first-served or by lottery. Flexibility of response is crucial. This played out in adding flexibility around the decision to vaccinate veterans aged ≥ 75 years before those aged 65 to 74 years, after revisiting how this prioritization might affect feasibility and throughput and opting to allow the opportunity to include those aged ≥ 65 years.

There will no doubt be additional modifications to the vaccine allocation plan as more data become available. Since the danger of fueling suspicion and distrust is high (ie, that certain privileged people are jumping the line, as we heard reports of in some non-VA facilities).¹² There is an obvious ethical duty to explain why the chosen approach is ethically defensible. VA facility leaders should be able to answer how their approach achieves the goals of avoiding serious or fatal illness, reducing contagion, and preserving the essential workforce while ensuring a fair, respectful, evidence-based, and transparent process.

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) COVID-19 vaccine allocation plan showcases several lessons for government and health care leaders in planning for future pandemics.¹ Many state governments—underresourced and overwhelmed with other COVID-19 demands—have struggled to get COVID-19 vaccines into the arms of their residents.² In contrast, the VHA was able to mobilize early to identify vaccine allocation guidelines and proactively prepare facilities to vaccinate VHA staff and veterans as soon as vaccines were approved under Emergency Use Authorization by the US Food and Drug Administration.^3,4

In August 2020, VHA formed a COVID-19 Vaccine Integrated Project Team, composed of 6 subgroups: communications, distribution, education, measurement, policy, prioritization, and vaccine safety. The National Center for Ethics in Health Care weighed in on the ethical justification for the developed vaccination risk stratification framework, which was informed by, but not identical to, that recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.⁵

Prioritizing who gets early access to a potentially life-saving vaccine weighs heavily on those leaders charged with making such decisions. The ethics of scarce resource allocation and triage protocols that may be necessary in a pandemic are often in tension with the patient-centered clinical ethics that health care practitioners (HCPs) encounter. HCPs require assistance in appreciating the ethical rationale for this shift in focus from the preference of the individual to the common good. The same is true for the risk stratification criteria required when there is not sufficient vaccine for all those who could benefit from immunization. Decisions must be transparent to ensure widespread acceptance and trust in the vaccination process. The ethical reasoning and values that are the basis for allocation criteria must be clearly, compassionately, and consistently communicated to the public, as outlined below. Ethical questions or concerns involve a conflict between core values: one of the central tasks of ethical analysis is to identify the available ethical options to resolve value conflicts. Several ethical frameworks for vaccine allocation are available—each balances and weighs the primary values of equity, dignity, beneficence, and utility slightly differently.⁶

For example, utilitarian ethics looks to produce the most good and avoid the most harm for the greatest number of people. Within this framework, there can be different notions of “good,” for example, saving the most lives, the most life years, the most quality life years, or the lives of those who have more life “innings” ahead. The approach of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) focuses on saving the most lives in combination with avoiding suffering from serious illness, minimizing contagion, and preserving the essential workforce. Frameworks that give primacy to 1 notion of the good (ie, saving the most lives) may deprioritize other beneficial outcomes, such as allowing earlier return to work, school, and leisure activities that many find integral to human flourishing. Other ethical theories and principles may be used to support various allocation frameworks. For example, a pragmatic ethics approach might emphasize the importance of adapting the approach based on the evolving science and innovation surrounding COVID-19. Having more than 1 ethically defensible approach is common; the goal in ethics work is to be open to diversity of thought and reflect on the strength of one’s reasoning in resolving a core values conflict. We identify 2 central tenets of pandemic ethics that inform vaccine allocation.

1. Pandemic Ethics Requires Proactive Planning and Reevaluation of Continually Evolving Facts

There is an oft quoted saying among bioethicists: “Good ethics begins with good facts.” One obvious challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic has been the difficulty accessing up-to-date facts to inform decision making. If a main goal of a vaccination plan is to minimize the incidence of serious or fatal COVID-19 disease and contagion, myriad data points are needed to identify the best way to do this. For example, if 2 doses of the same vaccine are needed, this impacts the logistics of identifying, inviting, and scheduling eligible individuals and staffing vaccine clinics as well as ensuring that sufficient personal protective equipment and rescue equipment/medication are available to treat allergic reactions. If the adverse effects of vaccines lead to staff absenteeism or vaccine hesitancy, this needs to be factored into logistics.⁷ Tailored messaging is important to reduce appointment no-shows and vaccine nonadopters.⁸ Transportation to vaccination sites is a relevant factor: how a vaccine is stored, thawed, and reconstituted and its shelf life impacts whether it can be transported after thawing and what must be provided on site.

Consideration of the multifaceted factors influencing a successful vaccination campaign requires proactive planning and the readiness to pivot when new information is revealed. For example, vaccine appointment no-shows should be anticipated along with a fair process for allocating unused vaccine that would otherwise be wasted. This is an example of responsible stewardship of a scarce and life-saving resource. A higher than anticipated no-show rate would require revisiting a facility’s approach to ensuring that waste is avoided while the process is perceived to be fair and transparent. Ethical theories and principles cannot do all the work here; mindful attention to detail and proactive, informed planning are critical. Fortunately, the VA is well resourced in this domain, whereas many state health departments floundered in their response, causing unnecessary vaccination delays.⁹

2. Utility: Necessary But Insufficient

Most ethical approaches recognize to some extent that seeking good and minimizing harm is of value. However, a strictly utilitarian approach is insufficient to address the core values in conflict surrounding how best to allocate limited doses of COVID-19 vaccine. For example, some may argue that prioritizing the elderly or those in long-term care facilities like VA’s community living centers because they have the highest COVID-19 mortality rate produces less net benefit than prioritizing younger veterans with comorbidities or certain higher risk essential workers. There are 2 important points to make here.

First, the VHA vaccination plan balances utility with other ethical principles, namely, treating people with equal concern, and addressing health inequities, including a focus on justice and valuing the worth and dignity of each person. Rather than giving everyone an equal chance via lottery, the prioritization plan recognizes that some people have greater need or would stand to better mitigate viral contagion and preserve the essential workforce if they were vaccinated earlier. However, the principle of justice requires that efforts are made to treat like cases the same to avoid perceptions of bias, and to demonstrate respect for the dignity of each individual by way of promoting a fair vaccination process.

This requires transparency, consistency, and delivery of respectful and accurate communication. For example, the VA recognizes that lifetime exposure to social injustice produces health inequities that make Black, Hispanic, and Native American persons more susceptible to contracting COVID-19 and suffering serious or fatal illness. The approach to addressing this inequity is by giving priority to those with higher risk factors. Again, this is an example of blending and balancing ethical principles of utility and justice—that is, recognizing and remedying social injustice is of value both because it will help achieve better outcomes for persons of color and because it is inherently worthwhile to oppose injustice.

However, contrary to some news reports, the VHA approach does not allocate by race/ethnicity alone, as it does by age.^10,11 Doing so would present logistical challenges—for example, race/ethnicity is not an objective classification as is age, and reconciling individuals’ self-reports could create confusion or chaos that is antithetical to a fair, streamlined vaccination program. Putting veterans of color at the front of the vaccination line could backfire by amplifying worries that they are being exposed to vaccine that is not fully tested (a common contributor to vaccine hesitancy, particularly among communities of color familiar with prior exploitation and abuse in the name of science).

Discriminating based on race/ethnicity alone in the spirit of achieving equity would be precedent setting for the VA and would require a strong ethical justification. The decision to prioritize for vaccine based on risk factors strives to achieve this balance of equity and utility, as it encompasses VA staff and veterans of color by way of their status as essential workers or those with comorbidities. However, it is important to address race-based access barriers and vaccine hesitancy to satisfy the equity demands. This effort is underway (eg, engaging community champions and developing tailored educational resources to reach diverse communities).

In addition, pragmatic ethics recognizes that an overly granular, complicated allocation plan would be inefficient to implement. While it might be true that some veterans who are aged < 65 years may be at higher risk from COVID-19 than some elderly veterans, achieving the goals of fairness and transparency requires establishing a vaccine prioritization plan that is both ethically defensible and feasibly implementable (ie, achieves its goal of getting “needles into arms”). For example, veterans aged ≥ 65 years may be invited to schedule their vaccination before younger veterans, but any veteran may be accepted “on-call” for vaccine appointment no-shows via first-come, first-served or by lottery. Flexibility of response is crucial. This played out in adding flexibility around the decision to vaccinate veterans aged ≥ 75 years before those aged 65 to 74 years, after revisiting how this prioritization might affect feasibility and throughput and opting to allow the opportunity to include those aged ≥ 65 years.

There will no doubt be additional modifications to the vaccine allocation plan as more data become available. Since the danger of fueling suspicion and distrust is high (ie, that certain privileged people are jumping the line, as we heard reports of in some non-VA facilities).¹² There is an obvious ethical duty to explain why the chosen approach is ethically defensible. VA facility leaders should be able to answer how their approach achieves the goals of avoiding serious or fatal illness, reducing contagion, and preserving the essential workforce while ensuring a fair, respectful, evidence-based, and transparent process.

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) COVID-19 vaccine allocation plan showcases several lessons for government and health care leaders in planning for future pandemics.¹ Many state governments—underresourced and overwhelmed with other COVID-19 demands—have struggled to get COVID-19 vaccines into the arms of their residents.² In contrast, the VHA was able to mobilize early to identify vaccine allocation guidelines and proactively prepare facilities to vaccinate VHA staff and veterans as soon as vaccines were approved under Emergency Use Authorization by the US Food and Drug Administration.^3,4

In August 2020, VHA formed a COVID-19 Vaccine Integrated Project Team, composed of 6 subgroups: communications, distribution, education, measurement, policy, prioritization, and vaccine safety. The National Center for Ethics in Health Care weighed in on the ethical justification for the developed vaccination risk stratification framework, which was informed by, but not identical to, that recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.⁵

Prioritizing who gets early access to a potentially life-saving vaccine weighs heavily on those leaders charged with making such decisions. The ethics of scarce resource allocation and triage protocols that may be necessary in a pandemic are often in tension with the patient-centered clinical ethics that health care practitioners (HCPs) encounter. HCPs require assistance in appreciating the ethical rationale for this shift in focus from the preference of the individual to the common good. The same is true for the risk stratification criteria required when there is not sufficient vaccine for all those who could benefit from immunization. Decisions must be transparent to ensure widespread acceptance and trust in the vaccination process. The ethical reasoning and values that are the basis for allocation criteria must be clearly, compassionately, and consistently communicated to the public, as outlined below. Ethical questions or concerns involve a conflict between core values: one of the central tasks of ethical analysis is to identify the available ethical options to resolve value conflicts. Several ethical frameworks for vaccine allocation are available—each balances and weighs the primary values of equity, dignity, beneficence, and utility slightly differently.⁶

For example, utilitarian ethics looks to produce the most good and avoid the most harm for the greatest number of people. Within this framework, there can be different notions of “good,” for example, saving the most lives, the most life years, the most quality life years, or the lives of those who have more life “innings” ahead. The approach of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) focuses on saving the most lives in combination with avoiding suffering from serious illness, minimizing contagion, and preserving the essential workforce. Frameworks that give primacy to 1 notion of the good (ie, saving the most lives) may deprioritize other beneficial outcomes, such as allowing earlier return to work, school, and leisure activities that many find integral to human flourishing. Other ethical theories and principles may be used to support various allocation frameworks. For example, a pragmatic ethics approach might emphasize the importance of adapting the approach based on the evolving science and innovation surrounding COVID-19. Having more than 1 ethically defensible approach is common; the goal in ethics work is to be open to diversity of thought and reflect on the strength of one’s reasoning in resolving a core values conflict. We identify 2 central tenets of pandemic ethics that inform vaccine allocation.

1. Pandemic Ethics Requires Proactive Planning and Reevaluation of Continually Evolving Facts

There is an oft quoted saying among bioethicists: “Good ethics begins with good facts.” One obvious challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic has been the difficulty accessing up-to-date facts to inform decision making. If a main goal of a vaccination plan is to minimize the incidence of serious or fatal COVID-19 disease and contagion, myriad data points are needed to identify the best way to do this. For example, if 2 doses of the same vaccine are needed, this impacts the logistics of identifying, inviting, and scheduling eligible individuals and staffing vaccine clinics as well as ensuring that sufficient personal protective equipment and rescue equipment/medication are available to treat allergic reactions. If the adverse effects of vaccines lead to staff absenteeism or vaccine hesitancy, this needs to be factored into logistics.⁷ Tailored messaging is important to reduce appointment no-shows and vaccine nonadopters.⁸ Transportation to vaccination sites is a relevant factor: how a vaccine is stored, thawed, and reconstituted and its shelf life impacts whether it can be transported after thawing and what must be provided on site.

Consideration of the multifaceted factors influencing a successful vaccination campaign requires proactive planning and the readiness to pivot when new information is revealed. For example, vaccine appointment no-shows should be anticipated along with a fair process for allocating unused vaccine that would otherwise be wasted. This is an example of responsible stewardship of a scarce and life-saving resource. A higher than anticipated no-show rate would require revisiting a facility’s approach to ensuring that waste is avoided while the process is perceived to be fair and transparent. Ethical theories and principles cannot do all the work here; mindful attention to detail and proactive, informed planning are critical. Fortunately, the VA is well resourced in this domain, whereas many state health departments floundered in their response, causing unnecessary vaccination delays.⁹

2. Utility: Necessary But Insufficient

Most ethical approaches recognize to some extent that seeking good and minimizing harm is of value. However, a strictly utilitarian approach is insufficient to address the core values in conflict surrounding how best to allocate limited doses of COVID-19 vaccine. For example, some may argue that prioritizing the elderly or those in long-term care facilities like VA’s community living centers because they have the highest COVID-19 mortality rate produces less net benefit than prioritizing younger veterans with comorbidities or certain higher risk essential workers. There are 2 important points to make here.

First, the VHA vaccination plan balances utility with other ethical principles, namely, treating people with equal concern, and addressing health inequities, including a focus on justice and valuing the worth and dignity of each person. Rather than giving everyone an equal chance via lottery, the prioritization plan recognizes that some people have greater need or would stand to better mitigate viral contagion and preserve the essential workforce if they were vaccinated earlier. However, the principle of justice requires that efforts are made to treat like cases the same to avoid perceptions of bias, and to demonstrate respect for the dignity of each individual by way of promoting a fair vaccination process.

This requires transparency, consistency, and delivery of respectful and accurate communication. For example, the VA recognizes that lifetime exposure to social injustice produces health inequities that make Black, Hispanic, and Native American persons more susceptible to contracting COVID-19 and suffering serious or fatal illness. The approach to addressing this inequity is by giving priority to those with higher risk factors. Again, this is an example of blending and balancing ethical principles of utility and justice—that is, recognizing and remedying social injustice is of value both because it will help achieve better outcomes for persons of color and because it is inherently worthwhile to oppose injustice.

However, contrary to some news reports, the VHA approach does not allocate by race/ethnicity alone, as it does by age.^10,11 Doing so would present logistical challenges—for example, race/ethnicity is not an objective classification as is age, and reconciling individuals’ self-reports could create confusion or chaos that is antithetical to a fair, streamlined vaccination program. Putting veterans of color at the front of the vaccination line could backfire by amplifying worries that they are being exposed to vaccine that is not fully tested (a common contributor to vaccine hesitancy, particularly among communities of color familiar with prior exploitation and abuse in the name of science).

Discriminating based on race/ethnicity alone in the spirit of achieving equity would be precedent setting for the VA and would require a strong ethical justification. The decision to prioritize for vaccine based on risk factors strives to achieve this balance of equity and utility, as it encompasses VA staff and veterans of color by way of their status as essential workers or those with comorbidities. However, it is important to address race-based access barriers and vaccine hesitancy to satisfy the equity demands. This effort is underway (eg, engaging community champions and developing tailored educational resources to reach diverse communities).

In addition, pragmatic ethics recognizes that an overly granular, complicated allocation plan would be inefficient to implement. While it might be true that some veterans who are aged < 65 years may be at higher risk from COVID-19 than some elderly veterans, achieving the goals of fairness and transparency requires establishing a vaccine prioritization plan that is both ethically defensible and feasibly implementable (ie, achieves its goal of getting “needles into arms”). For example, veterans aged ≥ 65 years may be invited to schedule their vaccination before younger veterans, but any veteran may be accepted “on-call” for vaccine appointment no-shows via first-come, first-served or by lottery. Flexibility of response is crucial. This played out in adding flexibility around the decision to vaccinate veterans aged ≥ 75 years before those aged 65 to 74 years, after revisiting how this prioritization might affect feasibility and throughput and opting to allow the opportunity to include those aged ≥ 65 years.

There will no doubt be additional modifications to the vaccine allocation plan as more data become available. Since the danger of fueling suspicion and distrust is high (ie, that certain privileged people are jumping the line, as we heard reports of in some non-VA facilities).¹² There is an obvious ethical duty to explain why the chosen approach is ethically defensible. VA facility leaders should be able to answer how their approach achieves the goals of avoiding serious or fatal illness, reducing contagion, and preserving the essential workforce while ensuring a fair, respectful, evidence-based, and transparent process.

Little has been known about children sick enough with COVID-19 to require intensive care because such patients are relatively few, but preliminary data analyzed from a nationwide registry indicate that they are more likely to be older, to be Black, and to have asthma.

Gastrointestinal distress is also more common in children with severe COVID-19, according to research by Sandeep Tripathi, MD. Dr. Tripathi, a pediatric intensivist and associate professor at the University of Illinois at Peoria, presented the findings on Feb. 3 at the Society for Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) 2021 Critical Care Congress.
 

Registry data gathered from 49 sites

Results from the SCCM’s VIRUS: COVID-19 Registry, which involved data from 49 sites, included 181 children admitted to an intensive care unit between February and July 2020. Those in the ICU were older than patients who did not receive care in the ICU (10 years vs. 3.67 years; P < .01) and were more likely to be Black (28.8% vs. 17.8%; P = .02).

More of the patients who required intensive care had preexisting conditions (58.2% vs. 44.3%; P = .01), the most common of which was asthma.

For both the ICU patients and the non-ICU group, the most common presenting symptom was fever.

Symptoms that were more common among children needing ICU care included nausea/vomiting (38.4% vs. 22.1%; P < .01), dyspnea (31.8% vs. 17.7%; P < .01), and abdominal pain (25.2% vs. 14.1%; P < .01).

Significantly higher proportions of ICU patients had multisystem inflammatory syndrome of childhood (MIS-C) (44.2% vs. 6.8%; P < .01) and acute kidney injury (9.34% vs. 1.7%; P < .01).

“The children who presented with MIS-C tended to be much sicker than children who present with just COVID,” Dr. Tripathi said in an interview.

In this analysis, among children in ICUs with COVID, the mortality rate was 4%, Dr. Tripathi said.

He said he hopes the information, which will be periodically published with updated data, will raise awareness of which children might be likely to experience progression to severe disease.

“The information may help physicians be more mindful of deterioration in those patients and be more aggressive in their management,” he said. When children are brought to the emergency department with the features this analysis highlights, he said, “physicians should have a low threshold for treating or admitting the patients.”

Another study that was presented on Feb. 3 in parallel with the registry study described patterns of illness among 68 children hospitalized with COVID-19 in a tertiary-care pediatric center.

In that analysis, Meghana Nadiger, MD, a critical care fellow with Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami, found that all patients admitted to the pediatric ICU (n = 17) had either MIS-C or severe illness and COVID-19-related Kawasaki-like disease.

The investigators also found that the patients with serious illness were more commonly adolescents with elevated body mass index (73%). In this study, 83.8% of the hospitalized children were Hispanic. They also found that 88.8% of the children older than 2 years who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 were overweight or obese, with a BMI >25 kg/m².

Jerry Zimmerman, MD, PhD, SCCM’s immediate past president, said in an interview that he found it interesting that in the Nadiger study, “All of the children with severe illness had MIS-C as compared to adults, who typically are critically ill with severe acute respiratory distress syndrome.” Dr. Zimmerman was not involved in either study.

He said that although the high percentage of Hispanic patients in the hospitalized population may reflect the high percentage of Hispanic children in the Miami area, it may also reflect challenges of controlling the disease in the Hispanic community. Such challenges might include shortages of personal protective equipment, poorer access to health care, and difficulty in social distancing.

Dr. Zimmerman pointed out that obesity is an important risk factor for COVID-19 and that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, childhood obesity is much more common among Hispanics (25.8%) and non-Hispanic Blacks persons (22.0%) compared with non-Hispanic White persons (14.1%).

The VIRUS registry is funded in part by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Janssen Research and Development. Dr. Tripathi, Dr. Nadiger, and Dr. Zimmerman have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Little has been known about children sick enough with COVID-19 to require intensive care because such patients are relatively few, but preliminary data analyzed from a nationwide registry indicate that they are more likely to be older, to be Black, and to have asthma.

Gastrointestinal distress is also more common in children with severe COVID-19, according to research by Sandeep Tripathi, MD. Dr. Tripathi, a pediatric intensivist and associate professor at the University of Illinois at Peoria, presented the findings on Feb. 3 at the Society for Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) 2021 Critical Care Congress.
 

Registry data gathered from 49 sites

Results from the SCCM’s VIRUS: COVID-19 Registry, which involved data from 49 sites, included 181 children admitted to an intensive care unit between February and July 2020. Those in the ICU were older than patients who did not receive care in the ICU (10 years vs. 3.67 years; P < .01) and were more likely to be Black (28.8% vs. 17.8%; P = .02).

More of the patients who required intensive care had preexisting conditions (58.2% vs. 44.3%; P = .01), the most common of which was asthma.

For both the ICU patients and the non-ICU group, the most common presenting symptom was fever.

Symptoms that were more common among children needing ICU care included nausea/vomiting (38.4% vs. 22.1%; P < .01), dyspnea (31.8% vs. 17.7%; P < .01), and abdominal pain (25.2% vs. 14.1%; P < .01).

Significantly higher proportions of ICU patients had multisystem inflammatory syndrome of childhood (MIS-C) (44.2% vs. 6.8%; P < .01) and acute kidney injury (9.34% vs. 1.7%; P < .01).

“The children who presented with MIS-C tended to be much sicker than children who present with just COVID,” Dr. Tripathi said in an interview.

In this analysis, among children in ICUs with COVID, the mortality rate was 4%, Dr. Tripathi said.

He said he hopes the information, which will be periodically published with updated data, will raise awareness of which children might be likely to experience progression to severe disease.

“The information may help physicians be more mindful of deterioration in those patients and be more aggressive in their management,” he said. When children are brought to the emergency department with the features this analysis highlights, he said, “physicians should have a low threshold for treating or admitting the patients.”

Another study that was presented on Feb. 3 in parallel with the registry study described patterns of illness among 68 children hospitalized with COVID-19 in a tertiary-care pediatric center.

In that analysis, Meghana Nadiger, MD, a critical care fellow with Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami, found that all patients admitted to the pediatric ICU (n = 17) had either MIS-C or severe illness and COVID-19-related Kawasaki-like disease.

The investigators also found that the patients with serious illness were more commonly adolescents with elevated body mass index (73%). In this study, 83.8% of the hospitalized children were Hispanic. They also found that 88.8% of the children older than 2 years who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 were overweight or obese, with a BMI >25 kg/m².

Jerry Zimmerman, MD, PhD, SCCM’s immediate past president, said in an interview that he found it interesting that in the Nadiger study, “All of the children with severe illness had MIS-C as compared to adults, who typically are critically ill with severe acute respiratory distress syndrome.” Dr. Zimmerman was not involved in either study.

He said that although the high percentage of Hispanic patients in the hospitalized population may reflect the high percentage of Hispanic children in the Miami area, it may also reflect challenges of controlling the disease in the Hispanic community. Such challenges might include shortages of personal protective equipment, poorer access to health care, and difficulty in social distancing.

Dr. Zimmerman pointed out that obesity is an important risk factor for COVID-19 and that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, childhood obesity is much more common among Hispanics (25.8%) and non-Hispanic Blacks persons (22.0%) compared with non-Hispanic White persons (14.1%).

The VIRUS registry is funded in part by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Janssen Research and Development. Dr. Tripathi, Dr. Nadiger, and Dr. Zimmerman have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Little has been known about children sick enough with COVID-19 to require intensive care because such patients are relatively few, but preliminary data analyzed from a nationwide registry indicate that they are more likely to be older, to be Black, and to have asthma.

Gastrointestinal distress is also more common in children with severe COVID-19, according to research by Sandeep Tripathi, MD. Dr. Tripathi, a pediatric intensivist and associate professor at the University of Illinois at Peoria, presented the findings on Feb. 3 at the Society for Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) 2021 Critical Care Congress.
 

Registry data gathered from 49 sites

Results from the SCCM’s VIRUS: COVID-19 Registry, which involved data from 49 sites, included 181 children admitted to an intensive care unit between February and July 2020. Those in the ICU were older than patients who did not receive care in the ICU (10 years vs. 3.67 years; P < .01) and were more likely to be Black (28.8% vs. 17.8%; P = .02).

More of the patients who required intensive care had preexisting conditions (58.2% vs. 44.3%; P = .01), the most common of which was asthma.

For both the ICU patients and the non-ICU group, the most common presenting symptom was fever.

Symptoms that were more common among children needing ICU care included nausea/vomiting (38.4% vs. 22.1%; P < .01), dyspnea (31.8% vs. 17.7%; P < .01), and abdominal pain (25.2% vs. 14.1%; P < .01).

Significantly higher proportions of ICU patients had multisystem inflammatory syndrome of childhood (MIS-C) (44.2% vs. 6.8%; P < .01) and acute kidney injury (9.34% vs. 1.7%; P < .01).

“The children who presented with MIS-C tended to be much sicker than children who present with just COVID,” Dr. Tripathi said in an interview.

In this analysis, among children in ICUs with COVID, the mortality rate was 4%, Dr. Tripathi said.

He said he hopes the information, which will be periodically published with updated data, will raise awareness of which children might be likely to experience progression to severe disease.

“The information may help physicians be more mindful of deterioration in those patients and be more aggressive in their management,” he said. When children are brought to the emergency department with the features this analysis highlights, he said, “physicians should have a low threshold for treating or admitting the patients.”

Another study that was presented on Feb. 3 in parallel with the registry study described patterns of illness among 68 children hospitalized with COVID-19 in a tertiary-care pediatric center.

In that analysis, Meghana Nadiger, MD, a critical care fellow with Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami, found that all patients admitted to the pediatric ICU (n = 17) had either MIS-C or severe illness and COVID-19-related Kawasaki-like disease.

The investigators also found that the patients with serious illness were more commonly adolescents with elevated body mass index (73%). In this study, 83.8% of the hospitalized children were Hispanic. They also found that 88.8% of the children older than 2 years who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 were overweight or obese, with a BMI >25 kg/m².

Jerry Zimmerman, MD, PhD, SCCM’s immediate past president, said in an interview that he found it interesting that in the Nadiger study, “All of the children with severe illness had MIS-C as compared to adults, who typically are critically ill with severe acute respiratory distress syndrome.” Dr. Zimmerman was not involved in either study.

He said that although the high percentage of Hispanic patients in the hospitalized population may reflect the high percentage of Hispanic children in the Miami area, it may also reflect challenges of controlling the disease in the Hispanic community. Such challenges might include shortages of personal protective equipment, poorer access to health care, and difficulty in social distancing.

Dr. Zimmerman pointed out that obesity is an important risk factor for COVID-19 and that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, childhood obesity is much more common among Hispanics (25.8%) and non-Hispanic Blacks persons (22.0%) compared with non-Hispanic White persons (14.1%).

The VIRUS registry is funded in part by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Janssen Research and Development. Dr. Tripathi, Dr. Nadiger, and Dr. Zimmerman have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

The Food and Drug Administration has revised its emergency use authorization for COVID-19 convalescent plasma on the basis of the latest available data.

The revision states that only high-titer COVID-19 convalescent plasma can be used and only in hospitalized patients who are early in the disease course and those with impaired humoral immunity who cannot produce an adequate antibody response.

The revisions stem from new clinical trial data analyzed or reported since the original EUA was issued in August 2020. The original EUA did not have these restrictions.

“This and other changes to the EUA represent important updates to the use of convalescent plasma for the treatment of COVID-19 patients,” Peter Marks, MD, PhD, director, FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement announcing the revisions.

“COVID-19 convalescent plasma used according to the revised EUA may have efficacy, and its known and potential benefits outweigh its known and potential risks,” the FDA said.

The agency said it revoked use of low-titer COVID-19 convalescent plasma on the basis of new data from clinical trials, including randomized, controlled trials, that have failed to demonstrate that low-titer convalescent plasma may be effective in the treatment of hospitalized patients with COVID-19.

The FDA’s updated fact sheet for health care providers on the use of COVID-19 convalescent plasma also notes that transfusion of COVID-19 convalescent plasma late in the disease course, following respiratory failure requiring intubation and mechanical ventilation, hasn’t been found to have clinical benefit.

The revised EUA also includes several additional tests that can be used to manufacture COVID-19 convalescent plasma.

“With this update, nine tests are now included in the EUA for testing plasma donations for anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies as a manufacturing step to determine suitability before release,” the FDA said.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

The Food and Drug Administration has revised its emergency use authorization for COVID-19 convalescent plasma on the basis of the latest available data.

The revision states that only high-titer COVID-19 convalescent plasma can be used and only in hospitalized patients who are early in the disease course and those with impaired humoral immunity who cannot produce an adequate antibody response.

The revisions stem from new clinical trial data analyzed or reported since the original EUA was issued in August 2020. The original EUA did not have these restrictions.

“This and other changes to the EUA represent important updates to the use of convalescent plasma for the treatment of COVID-19 patients,” Peter Marks, MD, PhD, director, FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement announcing the revisions.

“COVID-19 convalescent plasma used according to the revised EUA may have efficacy, and its known and potential benefits outweigh its known and potential risks,” the FDA said.

The agency said it revoked use of low-titer COVID-19 convalescent plasma on the basis of new data from clinical trials, including randomized, controlled trials, that have failed to demonstrate that low-titer convalescent plasma may be effective in the treatment of hospitalized patients with COVID-19.

The FDA’s updated fact sheet for health care providers on the use of COVID-19 convalescent plasma also notes that transfusion of COVID-19 convalescent plasma late in the disease course, following respiratory failure requiring intubation and mechanical ventilation, hasn’t been found to have clinical benefit.

The revised EUA also includes several additional tests that can be used to manufacture COVID-19 convalescent plasma.

“With this update, nine tests are now included in the EUA for testing plasma donations for anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies as a manufacturing step to determine suitability before release,” the FDA said.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

The Food and Drug Administration has revised its emergency use authorization for COVID-19 convalescent plasma on the basis of the latest available data.

The revision states that only high-titer COVID-19 convalescent plasma can be used and only in hospitalized patients who are early in the disease course and those with impaired humoral immunity who cannot produce an adequate antibody response.

The revisions stem from new clinical trial data analyzed or reported since the original EUA was issued in August 2020. The original EUA did not have these restrictions.

“This and other changes to the EUA represent important updates to the use of convalescent plasma for the treatment of COVID-19 patients,” Peter Marks, MD, PhD, director, FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement announcing the revisions.

“COVID-19 convalescent plasma used according to the revised EUA may have efficacy, and its known and potential benefits outweigh its known and potential risks,” the FDA said.

The agency said it revoked use of low-titer COVID-19 convalescent plasma on the basis of new data from clinical trials, including randomized, controlled trials, that have failed to demonstrate that low-titer convalescent plasma may be effective in the treatment of hospitalized patients with COVID-19.

The FDA’s updated fact sheet for health care providers on the use of COVID-19 convalescent plasma also notes that transfusion of COVID-19 convalescent plasma late in the disease course, following respiratory failure requiring intubation and mechanical ventilation, hasn’t been found to have clinical benefit.

The revised EUA also includes several additional tests that can be used to manufacture COVID-19 convalescent plasma.

“With this update, nine tests are now included in the EUA for testing plasma donations for anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies as a manufacturing step to determine suitability before release,” the FDA said.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.