Short and long-term outcomes of children and adolescents hospitalized with COVID-19 or influenza: results of the AUTCOV study.

Publication date: Jul 02, 2025

Recent literature gives different results on morbidity and mortality after COVID-19 hospitalization as compared to Influenza. In this registry-based study in Austria, we compared the short- and long-term outcomes after COVID-19 or Influenza hospitalization and associations with their baseline medication load. Data were provided on children and adolescents hospitalized with COVID-19 (sample size: 1061) in the years 2020 and 2021 or with Influenza in 2016-2021 (sample size: 2781) as well as on matched controls from the Austrian population (10,626 controls for COVID-19 and 27,634 for Influenza). The median follow-up time was 430 days in the COVID-19 and 1221 days in the Influenza group. Hospitalized children were more likely to have a larger disease burden as compared to the general population. Influenza patients were observed to be generally younger with a larger percentage of polypharmacy than those with COVID-19. No significant difference in the time to hospital discharge was found between Influenza and COVID-19 patients (HR 1. 22 [95% CI 0. 97-1. 55], p = 0. 093). The risk for readmission was significantly higher for Influenza (HR 1. 23 [95% CI 1. 03-1. 47], p = 0. 021). In-hospital mortality (COVID-19: 0. 94%; Influenza: 0. 22%) and 1-year mortality (COVID-19: 1. 13%; Influenza: 0. 31%) were observed to be higher in COVID-19 patients but severe events were generally rare. The findings suggest that COVID-19 should not generally be considered a milder disease than Influenza.

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