Back-to-school season is almost here, but instead of celebrating a quiet house that will soon become a home or buying school supplies, many parents are panicking about whether or not their children will be in the classroom and safe. of the coronavirus. And, of course, if they are back at school, there is the question of whether or not they will bring the virus home. Now a new study is providing a surprising insight into these questions. The study, from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, found that young children in particular carry much more of the coronavirus than adults. In fact, the investigation found up to “100-fold greater amount of SARS-CoV-2 in the upper respiratory tract of young children” younger than 5 years.
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According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, the average class size in American public schools with departmental instruction is between 24 and 26 students, depending on age. Discovering how to reduce this number has become a perennial discussion between educators and policy makers, who recognize that overloaded classrooms inhibit learning and allow many students to break out of the cracks in the system.
All this could change, since we reopened the schools and reimagined the classroom through the lens of social distancing. Although we don’t know yet how this will be accomplished, we will likely see smaller classes in the fall. According to NPR, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Michael Mulgrew, has suggested that classes of no more than 12 students would be optimal to maintain the requirements of social distancing. And to learn more about how the coronavirus will transform life in the classroom, check out these 7 things you’ll never see in schools again after the coronavirus.
The new study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, observed 145 COVID-19 patients with mild to moderate disease within a week of when symptoms began. The researchers compared three age groups: children younger than 5 years old, children 5-17 years old, and adults 18-65 years old. Although they found similar amounts of coronaviruses present in older children and adults, in children younger than 5 years, they found 10 to 100 times plus particles in the respiratory tract.
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Worried black mother looking at thermometer, sick daughter coughing
The investigation was led by Taylor Heald-Sargent, MD, pediatric infectious disease expert at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. In the report, Heald-Sargent and her team point out that children often drive the spread of respiratory and gastrointestinal illness, and COVID-19 may be no different.
“It definitely shows that children have similar virus levels and perhaps even higher than adults,” said Heald-Sargent. The New York Times. “It wouldn’t be surprising if they could throw [the virus]”and spread it to others. (Viral clearance indicates how long someone releases contaminated particles.” Evidence suggests that the new coronavirus is most contagious when symptoms are worst and viral clearance is high, “notes WebMD.)
The research indicates that school closings at the beginning of the pandemic likely “frustrated large-scale investigations of schools as a source of community transmission.” In other words, we still don’t know if the schools are COVID-19 super-spreaders because we closed them in the first few weeks of the outbreak.
“The school situation is very complicated, there are many nuances beyond the scientific one,” said Heald-Sargent. The times.
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A recent study from South Korea published in the CDC magazine Emerging infectious diseases-analyzed whether or not children disseminated COVID-19. The researchers looked at 5,700 people who reported coronavirus symptoms between January 20 and March 27, which is when South Korea closed schools. The results indicate that people between the ages of 10 and 19 are the most likely to spread the coronavirus in their homes.
“We detected COVID-19 in 11.8 percent of household contacts; the rates were higher for contacts than children than adults,” the researchers said. About 19 percent of those who shared a home with sick patients in that age group of 10 to 19 years also contracted COVID-19. Children under the age of 10 were less likely to spread the disease (about 5 percent of their contacts became ill). So there is evidence that children of a certain age are more infectious.
As for the new study, Heald-Sargent said The times, “One conclusion to this is that we cannot assume that just because children are not getting sick or very sick, they do not have the virus.” And for more on kids and COVID, check out the 8 Most Likely Ways Kids Can Spread COVID at School, Experts Say.
Video: What we know about children and Covid-19 (QuickTake)
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