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Compiled by Zakiyah Ebrahim
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Health24
15 minutes ago
- Studies on children and SARS-CoV-2 show that children play an important role in the transmission of the virus
- A new study sheds more light on this, indicating that infected children could be difficult to detect
- Therefore, screening processes and the implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions in school settings are essential.
Scientists have been trying to make sense of the data on the role children play in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, since the beginning of the pandemic.
A growing body of evidence suggests that children may play a larger role in transmission than previously thought.
To add to this evidence, a recent study by scientists at Duke University School of Medicine found that infected elementary school children could be difficult to detect.
Based on their findings, the researchers recommend that screening strategies in schools and daycare centers focus on age-related differences in symptoms.
The study was published on the medRxiv preprint server and has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Transmission of viruses from one child to another
For their study, the team looked at 382 children and young adults under the age of 21 who had been in close contact with a person infected with the virus.
Of the 382 children, 293 (77%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 before or during the study.
The researchers reported the following results:
- In the 6 to 13-year-old age group, only 61% of infected participants showed symptoms.
- In infected children under 6 years of age, 75% had symptoms.
- In those older than 13 years, 76% were found to show symptoms of infection.
The researchers also wrote that nearly a third of children infected with an infected sibling had no close contact with an infected adult, suggesting that the virus was passed from one child to another.
“Age-related differences in the clinical manifestations of SARS-CoV-2 infection should be taken into account when evaluating children for Covid-19 and when developing screening strategies for schools and child care settings,” they wrote. .
What another recent study says
Health24 recently reported on a comprehensive study published earlier this month that suggests that children are “silent spreaders” of the virus.
The document, which was published in the Journal of Pediatrics, showed that among study participants (pediatric patients between the ages of 0 to 22 years) who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, a significantly higher level of virus was detected, compared to adults hospitalized in ICU (units intensive care) for Covid -19 treatment.
“I didn’t expect the viral load to be that high. You think of a hospital and all the precautions that are taken to treat seriously ill adults, but the viral loads of these hospitalized patients are significantly lower than those of a ‘child healthy ‘who walks with a high SARS-CoV-2 viral load, “said Lael Yonker, MD, director of the MGH Cystic Fibrosis Center and lead author of the study.
The lead author of the article, Alessio Fasano, MD, director of the MGH Research Center for Immunology and Mucosal Biology, also commented that their results show that children are not protected against this virus, and that “we should not rule out the children as possible transmitters of this virus. virus”.
As schools around the world are slowly reopening, the researchers encouraged a safe back-to-school policy that includes not only relying on body temperature or symptom monitoring to identify cases of infection in the school setting, but also in Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) such as physical distancing, use of masks, hand hygiene, remote and face-to-face detection, among others.
