Table 1.

Presence of SARS-CoV-2 in children with critical acute illness

	Country	Sample size	Age	Sex	Diagnosis of COVID-19 complication	Baseline severity of COVID-19	Biopsy or autopsy	Organs analysed	Findings	Time between acute infection and biopsy or autopsy	Evidence of virus, viral fragments, or antibodies
Gomes et al (2021)19	Brazil	1	14 months	Female	Critical COVID-19	Critical	Autopsy	CNS	SARS-CoV-2 infection of brain tissue confirmed by RT-qPCR in fragments of the choroid plexus, lateral ventricle, and cortex	Acute infection	Viral RNA
Poisson et al (2022)20	USA	1	8 years	Female	Critical COVID-19	Critical	Autopsy	CNS	High SARS-CoV-2 IgM levels in the CSF	15 days	Antibodies
Mabena et al (2021)21	South Africa	12	35 days (median age)	58% males, 42% females	Critical COVID-19	Critical	Autopsy	Lung, liver, heart, and brain	SARS-COV-2 N1 and N2 detected in blood of 4 patients	Acute infection	N1 and N2 targets of the nucleocapsid gene
Freij et al (2020)22	USA	1	5 years	Female	Critical COVID-19	Critical	Autopsy	Brain	Cerebellar brain biopsy positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA	35 days	Viral RNA
Menger et al (2022)23	Germany	1	4 years	Female	Critical COVID-19	Critical	Autopsy	Lung	Presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA	17 days	Viral RNA
Bhatnagar et al (2021)24	USA	4	<1 year; 17 years	Not reported	Critical COVID-19	Critical	Autopsy	Lung and trachea	Presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in lungs of all the patients and in the trachea of 1 patient	1 −3 days	Viral RNA
Ninan et al (2021)25	USA	1	8 years	Female	Critical COVID-19	Critical	Autopsy	CSF, brain, bilateral lungs, blood	SARS-CoV-2 RNA tested by RT-PCR in CSF, blood, brain tissue, and bilateral lungs was negative	Acute infection	Not found
Duarte-Neto et al (2021)26	Brazil	2	8–12 years	Female	Critical COVID-19	Critical	Autopsy	Lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, spleen, brain, skin, and muscle	RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2 positive in the lungs of all patients, and in the heart of 1 patient	Acute infection	Viral RNA

CSF=cerebrospinal fluid.