According to new research in South Korea, children and young adults ages 10-19 can transmit coronavirus in the home as much as older people.
Researchers from the South Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who studied reports of 59,073 contacts of 5,706 COVID-19 patients also found that children ages 9 and younger transmitted the virus at their homes at much lower rates. CNN reported.
The study found that the highest COVID-19 rate at 18.6 percent for household contacts of school-age children and the lowest rates at 5.3 percent for children under 9 years of age was the close of middle school.
“The rates were higher for contacts than children than adults,” they wrote. “These risks largely reflect transmission amid mitigations and therefore could characterize transmission dynamics during school closure.”
Overall, researchers detected the disease in 11.8 percent of the 10,592 household contacts. For 48,481 non-domestic contacts, 1.9 percent tested positive, according to CNN.
“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 Covid-19 community transmission,” they added.
The study was published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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