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Much talk of schools. This is what experts at Bloomberg’s School of Health at John Hopkins Univ say about reopening schools, in the MOST comprehensive report yet analysing the key findings of published studies on Covid-19 in kids. 1/12
Children of all ages are susceptible to infection with Covid, but studies show reduced incidence of disease in children compared to adults. 2/12
Some studies provide evidence that there may be reduced susceptibility to the disease in kids. Incidence may also vary across the paediatric age spectrum, with a general increase in numbers of cases as children get older. 3/12
In South Korea, which conducted extensive testing, 1% of cases were found in children ages 0 to 9, while 5.2% of cases were found in the 10 to 19 age group. 4 /12
“Several studies have shown that attack rates—that is, the proportion of people in an initially uninfected community who become ill—are lower in children as compared to adults. However, evidence is mixed” 5/12
A study of 2,500+ contacts reported from 1,193 cases in Wuhan & Shanghai showed children who were in households with a Covid case were a third as likely to become infected" compared to adults, whereas 65+ were nearly 1.5 times as likely as younger adults to become infected. 6/12
A different study in Shenzhen showed that children in households were "equally likely as adults to be infected". The researchers concluded "although there are indications that children may be less susceptible to the disease, this conclusion cannot be made with confidence.”7/12
While much is unknown about COVID-19 in children, studies have provided fairly definitive and reassuring information on severity in children compared to severity in adults. Healthy children are much less likely than adults to develop severe disease 8/12
Since adults experience more severe illness and death than children, knowing the
risks of asymptomatic spread from children to adults is obv a central question. 9/12
Studies to improve understanding of the role of children in transmission are “beginning to emerge.”One study showed that viral loads are similar in children and adults. This means infected children have a similar amount of virus particles in testing samples as adults. 10/12
Although not a given that viral load is a primary indicator of transmissibility here, this supports idea children are as infectious and able to transmit disease as easily as adults. But, case investigations conducted to date suggest that transmission is not v frequent. 11/12
The report is here and well worth reading as it captures most of the evidence/studies to date. https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/pubs_archive/pubs-pdfs/2020/200515-reopening-schools.pdf 12/12
