Students play during their break after a summer break at St Lucas Church of England Elementary School in East London on 3 September 2020.
Daniel Lil-Olivas | AFP | Getty Images
If you live with children, according to a large study conducted in the UK, you do not have a big risk of contracting Kovid-19.
Researchers at Fact Oxford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that living with children had a lower risk of dying from coronavirus than living with children.
They examined 9 million adults under the age of 65 in the UK between February and August to see if the risk of infection with Covid-19, and the risk of serious consequences of having the virus, were different for people living with and without children.
The researchers found that living with children under the age of 11 “was not associated with an increased risk of reported Covid-19 infection, Covid-19 related hospital or ICU (intensive care unit) admission, but was associated with an increased risk of Covid-19 death.”
However, living with children aged 12–18 years was associated with a slightly increased risk of recorded coronavirus infection, the study noted, but not associated with other Covid-19 outcomes.
Living with children of any age had a lower risk of dying from non-covid-19 causes, the researchers found.
The study also looked at an additional 2.5 million adults over the age of 65 and found that “there is no link between living with children and Covid-19 related outcomes.”
The researchers highlighted that parents are found to have lower mortality rates for all reasons than those without children, noting that “protective methods of procreation include healthy behaviors in parents, such as smoking and alcohol, and healthy preference for late parents.” “
They also said that “beneficial changes in immune function from exposure to young children have been suggested to reduce mortality in parents.”
Quarreling over schools
The study comes amid ongoing uncertainty about the role of children and adolescents in coronavirus transmission. But researchers in the study noted that there was “acquired evidence” suggesting that, when it comes to Covid-19, “low susceptibility in children and possibly lower lower infection means they transmitted more infections than adults.” Can’t. “
There has been a heated debate over whether schools and colleges should remain open during the national lockdown, with millions of children staying at home when governments first locked up their economies in the spring.
In the midst of another wave of coronavirus infections, many countries have chosen to warn schools against harming children if their schooling is once again shut down.
In the UK, for example, schools, colleges and universities will remain open on Thursday when England enters its second lockdown. The government argued that the damage to children and their education from the closure of schools outweighed the potential risks to them and their carers from the virus.
Researchers in this recent study concluded that “there is no evidence of a risk of serious Covid-19 consequences for adults living with children” and that, when it comes to school termination, they found “no evidence of a reduction in risk. School closures.” . “
“These findings have implications for determining the benefit-loss balance of school-going children in the Covid-19 epidemic,” he said.
The study has not yet been published or peer-reviewed in any medical journal and is funded by a non-departmental public organization sponsored by the Medical Research Council, part of the UK Research and Innovation, the British Government’s Department of Business, Energy and Industrial. Has been born. Strategy.
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