A new review reports that COVID-19 is mild in children and it exhibits slightest symptoms or no symptoms at all. In addition to this, it also discussed whether or not a child is capable of passing COVID-19 to an adult and found that there is no evidence on this to be true.
This review on pediatric coronavirus studies documented that children do not play any vital role in the transmission of coronavirus and also they are not at a higher risk like adults. There is no single cause of any child who is under 10 years age to transmit this deadly infection to anyone. However, the World Health Organisation (WHO) tried to trace the contact and found nothing relevant.
This study was a collaborative effort between pediatric blog “Don’t Forget The Bubbles”, and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH). Here the researchers overlooked 78 studies from different parts of the world, while most of them were from China which is the country where this pandemic started.
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This study is out as the Swiss government announced a ban on grandparents on visiting, hugging, or kissing their grandkids because they assume that children might transfer the virus to these older adults. It is already established fact that the risk of COVID-19 is highest and deadly for older adults, especially people with underlying medical conditions that most of the older people have.
This review study was led by Alasdair Munro who is a clinical research fellow working on pediatric infectious diseases. He concluded this study as COVID-19 is less likely to affect the kids. Also, its symptoms in children are less severe than adults, or most of the time they are asymptomatic or turn out to be a subclinical infection.
He shared; “There is evidence of critical illness, but it is rare. The role of children in the transmission is unclear, but it seems likely they do not play a significant role.”
To explain the results, he used the example of a 9-years old boy who was diagnosed with coronavirus with symptoms.
While this boy from French Alps attended three different schools during this period when he contracted the virus, he was exposed to nearly 112 people. but none of them was diagnosed with the disease hence there is no evidence to tell that children can transmit COVID-19 to any other person.
Russell Viner is the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH). In his interview with a local newspaper, he told that a major part of the evidence from various parts of the world suggests that children do not play any role in the transmission of coronavirus. But still, there is not enough evidence on it.
He also shared that it is probably too early to make a statement on whether children hugging their grandparents is a risk factor to the grandparent’s health or not.
This new review also explained that 32% of cases of confirmed or suspected cases in children on COVID-19 were found asymptomatic. It means they didn’t exhibit any “characteristic symptoms of COVID-19”, as adults show.
While these symptoms are kind of “mild” in children; most of the cases share similar symptoms that include cough and fever. Some of them reported upper respiratory tract infection signs including runny nose, flu, and sore throat. Only 10% of these children reported diarrhea, vomiting, or either of these.
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Overall, the researchers have concluded that children are far less affected by COVID-19 than adults and only 0.6% of young kids are reported with confirmed cases by falling sick. For all others, the infection was mild, or without any symptoms.
Deaths by COVID-19 in children is are rare with only a few cases reported. That too is not evident if this infection was the only reason to cause it.
For newborn babies, the research team analyzed 50 cases where newborns from coronavirus positive mothers didn’t show any symptom of the disease. Also, they were diagnosed as negative for coronavirus infection.
Only a few of the newborn cases were reported positive but none of them went through any complications and only needed minimal treatment.
