KEY POINTS
• The mainstay of therapy for children with critical illness due to SARS-CoV-2 infection is supportive paediatric intensive care unit care with specialist multidisciplinary involvement.
• Critical illness resulting from SARS-CoV-2 infection in children has low reported mortality despite requiring significant levels of therapy at presentation and during intensive care stay.
• In children presenting with primarily respiratory symptoms, adherence to the paediatric acute respiratory distress syndrome guidelines and early prone ventilation appear the most effective strategies.
• Children who present with vasoplegic shock commonly require multiple vasopressors and demonstrate marked cardiovascular instability. There is an emerging trend for use of intravenous immunoglobulin in these patients.
• Cases that fulfil the paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome criteria are at risk of acutely developing cardiac and coronary dysfunction.