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BERLIN (BLOOMBERG) – Children with the new coronavirus can be as infectious as adults, according to a study in Germany that recommends caution against the unlimited reopening of schools and kindergartens.
While children have a lower risk of developing serious illness from Covid-19, they may be less able to spread it. Virus levels in the respiratory tract, the main route through which the pathogen is transmitted, do not appear significantly different between age groups, according to Christian Drosten, director of the Virology Institute at Charite Hospital in Berlin and colleagues.
Children contract the coronavirus less frequently and less severely, and there do not appear to be cases of a child passing Covid-19 to an adult, observations that may be “misinterpreted as an indication that children are less infectious,” they said. .
“All we really know at the moment is that, with a small number of exceptions, children are mildly affected by this infection,” said Adam Finn, professor of pediatrics at the University of Bristol and chairman of the European Technical Advisory Group. from the World Health Organization. of immunization experts.
“What is much less clear is how often they get infections and how infectious they are with each other and with other people in their families.”
The WHO says more research is needed on the subject. For now, home transmission studies indicate that children are less likely to transmit Covid-19 to adults than vice versa, WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove told reporters in Geneva on Wednesday (April 29) .
More detailed pediatric data on China’s Covid-19 showed that 13% of confirmed cases had no symptoms, and when confirmed and suspected cases were combined, nearly a third of children ages 6 to 10 were asymptomatic.
It is possible that because children tend to have milder cases of Covid-19, they are less likely to spread the virus by coughing and sneezing, said Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergency health program.
In this uncertain context, “we have to warn against an unlimited reopening of schools and kindergartens in the current situation, with a widely susceptible population and the need to keep transmission rates low,” said Drosten and other study authors.
While scientists have speculated on why few children become seriously ill with Covid-19, no study has explained the exact mechanism of this protective effect.
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