Early experience with universal preoperative and pre-procedural screening for COVID-19 in low-risk pediatric surgical patients requiring general anesthesia

PURPOSE: The COVID-19 pandemic has placed extraordinary demands on healthcare services worldwide. Some have reported increased viral transmission to healthcare workers during aerosol-generating procedures such as intubation. We report our experience with universal preoperative and preprocedural screening for COVID-19 in children requiring general anaesthesia with low risk of having the infection. METHODS: This was a data review involving children aged < 18 years undergoing procedures under general anaesthesia in our institution from 18th March to 31st May 2020 and deemed low risk for COVID 19 infection, as defined by our institutional protocol. Confirmation of COVID-19 was by real time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction with confirmation by nucleic acid sequencing. All patients were followed up 14 days post-swab. RESULTS: Of the 66 children (median age 4.5 years, range 0–16.8) eligible for the study, 39 (60%) were male and infants (1–12 months) formed the largest group (n = 24, 36%). None were positive for COVID-19. On 14 day follow-up, none had symptoms related to COVID-19. CONCLUSION: Our study shows that low risk asymptomatic children with no history of contact with COVID-19 patients test negative on universal screening. Larger studies are required to ascertain the role of screening prior to procedures done under general anaesthesia.