Researchers in South Korea have found that children between the ages of 10 and 19 can transmit Covid-19 within a home as much as adults, according to new research published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Centers for Control and U.S. Disease Prevention
The researchers also found that children ages 9 and younger transmitted the virus within their home at much lower rates.
Researchers from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed reports of 59,073 contacts from 5,706 coronavirus patients.
Overall, the researchers detected Covid-19 in 11.8% of 10,592 household contacts. For 48,481 non-domestic contacts, 1.9% tested positive for Covid-19.
When the initial home patient was younger than 10 years, the researchers found that 5.3% of home contacts tested positive for Covid-19. When the initial patient was between 10 and 19 years old, 18.6% of the contacts tested positive.
The rates were higher for child contacts than for adult contacts, “the authors said.” These risks largely reflect transmission amid mitigations and, therefore, could characterize transmission dynamics during school closure. “
The researchers also found that the highest Covid-19 rate for household contacts for school-age children and the lowest rate for children under the age of 9 was middle school closure.
“Although the detection rate of contacts for preschool-age children was lower, young children may show higher attack rates when school closes, which contributes to community transmission of Covid-19,” the study said. .
This is a study in many, ”said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Institute of Global Health, speaking on CNN’s” Inside Politics “on Sunday. “And the general consensus that I think most of us have had is that younger children are definitely much less extended. Older kids, especially as you start to get into teens and older teens, start to look like adults. ”
Jha said that ultimately what you want to do is suppress the virus in the community so that schools can safely reopen.
“You may have a different threshold for kids in kindergarten through 5, say, to go back to an earlier level,” Jha said. “And you may have to wait a little longer until virus levels actually drop before opening high schools.”
The authors said that there are some limitations in the study, including that the number of cases may have been underestimated and that they were unable to assess the true difference in transmissibility between household and non-household contacts due to different test thresholds.
.
