The New York Times reports on a new study from South Korea that finds that children as young as 10 can spread the coronavirus. Will the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC revise their guidelines based on this new information?
A large new study from South Korea offers an answer: Children younger than 10 transmit to others much less often than adults do, but the risk is not zero. And those between the ages of 10 and 19 can spread the virus at least as well as adults do.
The findings suggest that as schools reopen, communities will see clusters of infection take root that include children of all ages, several experts cautioned.
“I fear that there has been this sense that kids just won’t get infected or don’t get infected in the same way as adults and that, therefore, they’re almost like a bubbled population,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.
“There will be transmission,” Dr. Osterholm said. “What we have to do is accept that now and include that in our plans.”
Several studies from Europe and Asia have suggested that young children are less likely to get infected and to spread the virus. But most of those studies were small and flawed, said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.
The new study “is very carefully done, it’s systematic and looks at a very large population,” Dr. Jha said. “It’s one of the best studies we’ve had to date on this issue.”
Other experts also praised the scale and rigor of the analysis. South Korean researchers identified 5,706 people who were the first to report Covid-19 symptoms in their households between Jan. 20 and March 27, when schools were closed, and then traced the 59,073 contacts of these “index cases.” They tested all of the household contacts of each patient, regardless of symptoms, but only tested symptomatic contacts outside the household.
The first person in a household to develop symptoms is not necessarily the first to have been infected, and the researchers acknowledged this limitation. Children are also less likely than adults to show symptoms, so the study may have underestimated the number of children who set off the chain of transmission within their households.
Still, experts said the approach was reasonable. “It is also from a place with great contact tracing, done at the point interventions were being put in place,” said Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Children under 10 were roughly half as likely as adults to spread the virus to others, consistent with other studies. That may be because children generally exhale less air — and therefore less virus-laden air — or because they exhale that air closer to the ground, making it less likely that adults would breathe it in.
Even so, the number of new infections seeded by children may rise when schools reopen, the study authors cautioned. “Young children may show higher attack rates when the school closure ends, contributing to community transmission of Covid-19,” they wrote. Other studies have also suggested that the large number of contacts for schoolchildren, who interact with dozens of others for a good part of the day, may cancel out their smaller risk of infecting others.
The researchers traced the contacts only of children who felt ill, so it’s still unclear how efficiently asymptomatic children spread the virus, said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“I think it was always going to be the case that symptomatic children are infectious,” she said. “The questions about the role of children are more around whether children who don’t have symptoms are infectious.”
Dr. Rivers was a member of a scientific panel that on Wednesday recommended reopening schools wherever possible for disabled children and for those in elementary schools, because those groups have the most trouble learning online. She said the new study does not alter that recommendation.
The study is more worrisome for children in middle and high school. This group was even more likely to infect others than adults were, the study found. But some experts said that finding may be a fluke or may stem from the children’s behaviors.
These older children are frequently as big as adults, and yet may have some of the same unhygienic habits as young children do. They may also have been more likely than the younger children to socialize with their peers within the high-rise complexes in South Korea.
“We can speculate all day about this, but we just don’t know,” Dr. Osterholm said. “The bottom line message is: There’s going to be transmission.”
He and other experts said schools will need to prepare for infections to pop up. Apart from implementing physical distancing, hand hygiene and masks, schools should also decide when and how to test students and staff — including, for example, bus drivers — when and how long to require people to quarantine, and when to decide to close and reopen schools.
But they face a monumental challenge because the evidence on transmission within schools has been far from conclusive so far, experts said. Some countries like Denmark and Finland have successfully reopened schools, but others, like China, Israel and South Korea, have had to close them down again.
Trump says, “Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day. They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test. Many of them — don’t forget, I guess it’s like 99.7 percent, people are going to get better and [in] many cases, they’re going to get better very quickly.”
Obviously, if Trump gets infected, he should refuse treatment.
Healthcare workers have a right to be protected from the risk they are exposed to if they provide medical care for know-it-all patients.
Aren’t Republicans all about accountability for actions?
No one gets near Trump or Pence unless they are tested.
The key to a safe opening seems to be starting a low rate of infections and continued vigilance wearing masks, social distancing and hand washing. Most of the South is in the middle of a firestorm of outbreaks. This does not bode well for opening school. In the South most communities do not know how the virus is spreading since testing is spotty, and there is very little contact tracing.
and the “news” many choose to hear on a daily basis tells them over and over that they are still being used as puppets in a hoax
While it doesn’t speak to the question of transmission, there was just a story out about an alarming number of very young children testing positive in Nueces county (Corpus Christi) Texas. 85 children younger than 2 have tested positive in July and one (6 months old) has died of the virus. Remember that all of these children were symptomatic or they would not have been tested. That kind of evidence really calls into question the assumptions that have been thrown around about children and Covid-19. We need to demand that public health officials to take a much closer look at the risk to children, both from infection and as regards the transmission of the virus both to and from them.
When we talk about students “getting behind” I have to ask, behind what? Our imperfect “standards” were written by imperfect human beings, not gods. change the standards. Re-write the curriculum. Meet the students needs where they are. We know how to do this. Finland already does it. Any talk of reopening schools now while we are literally ruled by a criminal administration in the midst of a new viral pandemic without adequate testing and tracing is dangerously irresponsible. Not even tents can solve this. American education suffers already from inflexibility, standardization and cost cutting. We know how to write curriculum. We can be creative. We can adapt. Pay a parent to stay home with the children until it is really safe to go out again. All we have to do to achieve this is overthrow the oligarchy. I have a high regard for educators and I believe they’ll figure this out without killing anyone.
If only we’re allowed to figure this out. Believe me, we’d all prefer that we stay remote for now (fortunately, my district is) and focus on doing the best possible teaching for our kids. But whether we’ll be allowed to or whether we’ll have non-educators breathing down our necks as we usually do to have our kids meet whatever arbitrary “standard” they have imposed is still an open question.
How many children returning to school will become orphans when they infect their parents with the virus after being infected on the way to school, at school, hanging out with friends, or on the way home?
Many children live in extended multi-generational families. There will most likely be an increased risk to the elderly and those with preexisting conditions unless schools can minimize the spread.
Who says other countries don’t know how awful Trump is? Here is an opinion piece from Mcleans in Canada:
The unmasking of Donald Trump
Adnan R. Khan: As Trump’s poll numbers plummet, a desperate U.S. president reveals his true colours, and finds theatrics can only take him so far
July 17, 2020
…As a businessman, even as incompetent as he was, Trump had been able to maintain the illusion of invincibility. The masks never came off. Even when it seemed like he was on the verge of being outed as a shyster, he stayed in character, forever the bigwig blessed with a golden touch. But as president, the opposite has happened: he has been steadily unmasked.
Is it a function of increased scrutiny? Despite his enablers—Attorney General Bill Barr and Republican members of Congress who continue to throw up smoke screens to protect a man they see as their best chance to reverse the tide of liberalism they believe is threatening to destroy America—Trump can’t completely avoid the oversight that comes with being president, particularly with a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. Or maybe it’s just plain old age. Trump’s lifestyle, his eating habits, lack of exercise and any meaningful intellectual stimulation is a perfect recipe for cognitive decline.
Whatever it might be, what we’re seeing now is not the same fit and agile Trump who is pictured in the 1997 New Yorker profile. We’re seeing past that glittery veneer at an angry man-child, the inevitable outcome of an upbringing poisoned by privilege and racism. The more he fails— against the pandemic, against America’s racial reckoning, against the polls—the more desperate he appears to become, and the more transparent…
https://www.macleans.ca/politics/washington/the-unmasking-of-donald-trump/
In the Chris Wallace interview Trump was bragging that he aced some type of dementia test. Wallace tried to restrain a smirk. He, of course, boldly asserted without any evidence that Biden is done. Biden’s mind is gone according to Trump.
Trump seemed to be unaware that the test is used for an estimate of cognitive functioning and indication of Alzheimer’s. I am given a version of this test for cognitive function every year as part of my Medicare “wellness checkup.”
Anyone wondering about Trump’s cognitive functioning should watch the Chris Wallace interview in full. Lies, misstatements, self-contradiction, boasting, nonsense.
Yes, but WHit’s (I do not say the name) mind was never there in the first place.
Mary explains it all! Read the book.
This was supposed to go under retired teacher’s comment at 11:54 AM, 7/20.
Trump’s Fox News interview, in 4 minutes
July 19, 2020 | 10:33 AM EDT
In an interview that aired July 19, “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace asked President Trump about the coronavirus, upcoming elections and civil unrest in the United States.
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https://wapo.st/3eNi1Md
So is the American Academy of Pediatrics going to rescind their statement? Doubtful. At least they can get some PPE. I am having to handmade my own and stock up, when I can find it, on cleaning supplies. None of that will be provided.