Spotlight for healthy adolescents and adolescents with preexisting chronic diseases during the COVID-19 pandemic

Recently, coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).The virus that causes the emerging infectious disease was designated by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (1,2).COVID-19 has been reported predominantly in adult patients.The clinical, laboratorial, and radiographic abnormalities for adults with COVID-19 include fever, dry cough, myalgia, fatigue, chest discomfort, respiratory frequency 430/min, blood oxygen saturation o93%, leukopenia, lymphopenia, and chest radiographic or computed tomographic scan with mild to severe pneumonia (1-3).The most important risk factors or comorbidities in adult COVID-19 patients include: age more than 60 years, cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, arterial hypertension, chronic respiratory disease, and cancer (2-4).In contrast to adults with COVID-19, the majority of children and adolescents infected with SARS-CoV-2 exhibited milder disease and also presented with nasal congestion, rhinorrhea, pharyngeal erythema, diarrhea, and vomiting.These young patients showed an adequate treatment response and a short duration to COVID-19 resolution (5,6).Adolescent populations have rarely been evaluated in the context of this emerging infectious disease.A recent study reported on 72,314 patients with COVID-19 from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 1% of whom were adolescents (10-19 years) (3).Notably, this infectious disease occurred in 169/4,212 (4%) adolescents in the Republic of Korea study (7).Another Chinese study, including 2,143 pediatric patients, showed that 35% of the patients were adolescents.Disease