Since the past few weeks, coronavirus in children has been a common topic of debate among the medical community, especially because the US and a number of other countries are planning to reopen all educational institutes including schools and resume in-person classes.
According to present data and research on the severity of coronavirus symptoms in different age groups, children are at a far lower risk of developing serious complications such as difficulty in breathing as well as have the long-term health conditions associated with the infection in older patients.
Currently, the majority of the new cases are of younger adults over the age of eighteen, which is why experts are worried about a greater spread of the virus since young adults are more likely to travel, go out in public spaces, and interact with a bigger number of people.
Just like young adults, children are also more likely to interact with multiple people especially if schools reopen ranging from classmates, teachers, and other staff at school as well as parents and other relatives.
Therefore, they can also spread the coronavirus infection significantly. Some experts suggest that kids may even be responsible for spreading the virus more than younger adults.
In fact, new medical commentary from Children’s National Hospital suggests that most children can transmit the virus even if they show no symptoms at all or have recovered from the infection.
The findings of the research, which are published in JAMA Pediatrics, concluded that nearly forty-two percent of the examined children with coronavirus infection never develop any known symptoms.
According to the researchers, this makes it hard to actually diagnose the infection in children as many of them do not even show any signs of having it, which further paves the way for a higher level of transmission of the infection to other people as the infected child as well as the parents would not be aware.
This is the reason why many children in the country of South Korea were kept at hospitals until it was confirmed that they did not have the virus. This practice is, however, only limited to South Korea.
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On the other hand, the US is still far behind with keeping up with coronavirus in children or even testing for the virus in adults due to the tremendous daily increase in new infections.
Though the study did not investigate whether there is a difference in transmission rates of symptomatic and asymptomatic cases of the infection in children, previous research has already established that kids carry more viruses overall in comparison with adults.
More viruses mean higher transmission rates are likely and that even though the majority of the children do not display symptoms of coronavirus, they can still spread it even more than young adults do.
Currently, there is a lack of research on coronavirus in children specifically on asymptomatic cases.
This is why most health experts state that further investigation is needed on the transmission of the infection through children to lower transmission rates and end the coronavirus pandemic effectively.
