The risk of Covid-19 infection in children and the severity of the disease for children are problems that are making many parents worry about insomnia. The latest data show that children are not immune to the new corona virus. This would have a serious impact on preventing a large local outburst of the disease.
Risk of Covid-19 infection in children - Misunderstandings about immunity to the disease at this age
Ten weeks after the Covid-19 pandemic , informational data have provided us with a more comprehensive view of this new viral disease. Scientists believe that the virus that causes this respiratory disease has the ability to spread through saliva when an infected person coughs. An infected person can infect about 2.2 others on average. According to global statistics, 3.4% of patients infected with Covid-19 die.
Even so, during the past time, there is still an unexplored mystery. What about the risk of Covid-19 infection to children?
In a recent analysis by a group of researchers at Johns Hopkins and in China, there were more than 72,000 patient cases in China. Among them, children under 10 years old account for less than 1% of all infections.
In addition, out of 1,023 deaths recorded in China at that time, no patients were children. WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Gheberyesus, said in mid-February that they had found very few cases of childhood illnesses. Therefore, more research is needed to explain the cause of this phenomenon.
Differences in mortality in Corona virus in children
"This is really a strange thing!". Says Buddy Creech, a pediatrician in infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. This doctor also said:
One basic model of the mortality of respiratory diseases that we often see is an increased prevalence in the elderly (weakened immune systems) and young children (weak immune systems). . But Covid-19 caused by a new virus appears to contradict this pattern.
The new study explains immunity to SARS-CoV-2 in infants
Recently, a new study has explained the possibility of this infection in children. In fact, children are not immune to the possibility of being infected with SARS-CoV-2, but the extent to which the development and the outward manifestation are not as serious as adults.
"Children are more likely to be infected when they reach adulthood". Justin Lessler, infectious disease epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who co-chaired the new study with epidemiologists at the Harbin Institute of Technology in Shenzhen.
Children are at a lower risk of developing the disease
According to data provided by Shenzhen, from the number of 391 patients with Covid-19 and 1,286 who had close contact with these patients, the team found that children 9 years of age and younger also had the chance of being infected is 7 to 8% like other age groups.
However, this age group is less likely to develop the serious symptoms of the disease commonly seen in older age groups. The results of the study have been published on medRxiv, the sharing site of the international medical and scientific community.
However, the data just stop at explaining why children are at a lower risk of developing the disease. Previous studies of a genetic relative of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the SARS 2002-2003 epidemic also showed that the effects of the disease on adults are greater than that of children. Of which, the data showed that the pandemic killed 774 people, but no one was under the age of 24.
Effects of childhood risk of infection on Covid-19 disease control
Experts explain that somehow children can take advantage of the body's previous immune responses to the viruses that cause respiratory disease. It may take years of experimentation for scientists to find the mechanism behind why Covid-19 appears to be less harmful to children.
But Lessler's study and data from Shenzhen have implications for the medical control of Covid-19 spread. If a child is completely infected, the spread of the disease will be more severe. This is because the child's symptoms appear to be mild, or even impossible to detect with the naked eye.
Therefore, closing schools and leaving students out of school is an important way to prevent the spread of disease.
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