Objective: To deepen the understanding of clinical characteristics of pediatric patients with COVID-19. Methods: Retrospective analysis was executed among 21 children and their 38 families with laboratory-conformed novel coronavirus disease in five designated hospitals. Results: In total of 21 children (10 males and 11 females) aged from 1 to 17 years, 90.5% were from 18 family clusters and admitted to designated hospitals 2 days after illness onset, shorter than the adults. Besides 5 asymptomatic cases, pediatric patients mainly performed as fever (66.7%), cough (19.0%) and expectoration (14.3%). Among the 38 adult patients, the major symptoms included fever (63.2%), cough (63.2%), expectoration (44.7%), fatigue (6.8%), chill (15.8%) and dizziness (15.8%). Most cases had normal (76.2%, 68.4%) or decreased (19.0%, 26.3%) leucocytes, nearly half of children showed decreased neutrophils. 15 children and 32 adults had pulmonary involvement, consisted of ground-glass opacity (57.1%, 60.5%), spots (14.3%, 23.7%), stripes (14.3%, 7.9%) and patchy shadow (9.5%, 36.8%). All adults received antiviral therapy: lopinavir/ritonavir (92.1%), interferon (76.3%), arbidol (71.1%), chloroquine (18.4%) and ribavirin (10.5%). 16 children used interferon; 12 took lopinavir/ritonavir; 7 were given arbidol; two received ribavirin. All patients had been recovered and discharged with duration of admission 4-47 days (median 17 days). Conclusions: Pediatric patients with COVID-19 presented as milder symptoms and limited lung lesions than adults. Laboratory abnormalities were atypical in mild patients, neutropenia may be a potential characteristic of children. Efficiency of antiviral therapy need to be further investigated.