Coronavirus: children under 5 transmit the infection as easily as older children

Children under the age of five can transmit the new coronavirus as easily as older children, a new study suggests.

The researchers found that while young people only develop mild illness, they have viral loads up to 100 times greater in their noses than adults.

The team, from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago says that younger children’s ability to spread COVID-19 has probably not been recognized because most schools and daycare centers closed in late March due to the pandemic.

A new study found that children ages 5 and younger had viral loads 10 to 100 times greater in the upper respiratory tract. In the photo: Paramedic Randy Lilly sits with a 10-month-old boy with a fever while traveling by ambulance to Stamford Hospital in Connecticut on April 4.

This implies that young children can transmit the virus as easily as teens, even though they only develop mild illness.

For the study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, the team collected nasopharyngeal swabs from hospitalized, outpatient, emergency and child-led patients at a tertiary pediatric medical center in Chicago.

They observed 145 patients who developed moderate illness within a week of experiencing symptoms.

Three groups were compared: children under five years old, children between five and 17 years old and adults between 18 and 65 years old.

Children in kindergarten or younger had viral loads 10 to 100 times higher in the upper respiratory tract.

“We found that children under the age of five with COVID-19 have a higher viral load than older children and adults, which may suggest increased transmission, as we see with the respiratory syncytial virus, also known as RSV,” he said. lead author Dr. Taylor Heald-Sargent. , a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Lurie Children’s.

“This has important implications for public health, especially during discussions about the safety of reopening schools and kindergartens.”

The researchers say the findings suggest that children could potentially be conductors of the spread of the virus in the general population.

“Our study was not designed to show that younger children spread COVID-19 as much as adults, but it is a possibility,” said Heald-Sargent.

“We have to take that into account in efforts to reduce transmission as we continue to learn more about this virus.”

The authors said this raises concerns that young children’s behavioral habits together at school or daycare could lead to serious spread.

But some, including President Donald Trump, have been pushing for schools across the country to reopen entirely for the fall semester.

Trump called the recommendations on school reopens made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “very difficult and expensive guidelines” on Twitter earlier this month.

It also threatened to cut funds if learning institutions were not to reopen entirely.

However, public health experts have said that schools should prepare with more than just social distancing and masks, but also evaluating students and staff and, if someone tests positive, determines how long they will be quarantined.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is an outlier, convening face-to-face classes in the fall and issuing a statement that “schools are critical to the development and well-being of children and adolescents.”

Some countries have been successful, such as Norway and Denmark, but many, including South Korea, have had to close schools after reopening due to spikes in infections.

The authors say that inoculating children as soon as there is a vaccine will be key.

“In addition to the public health implications, this population will be important to focus on immunization efforts as SARS-CoV-2 vaccines become available,” they wrote.