A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics suggests that children can spread SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, even if they never develop symptoms or even long after symptoms have cleared. It found a significant variation in how long children continued to “shed” the virus through their respiratory tract and, therefore, could potentially remain infectious.
Such research comes at an important time for communities. Under pressure from the teachers union to delay the start of the school year. While children infected with SARS-CoV-2 are less likely than adults to develop severe illness or complications, they are still at risk of becoming ill. “Recent COVID-19 hospitalization surveillance data shows that the rate of hospitalization among children is low compared with that in adults ,” the CDC said.
The risk, as Israel discovered, is providing an environment where children unwittingly spread the virus to each other, which can lead to community transmission. That’s particularly worrying for those who have underlying conditions, and the elderly, who are more vulnerable to the most severe effects of the virus. Community transmission also makes contact tracing more difficult.
The patients were identified for testing through contact tracing or after developing symptoms. About 22% never developed symptoms, 20% were initially asymptomatic but developed symptoms later, and 58% were symptomatic at their initial test. The hospital staff tested them every three days on average, providing a picture of how long viral shedding continues over many weeks.
But the study also had obvious limitations. One of these relates to the link between testing and transmission. A “positive” or “negative” result may not necessarily mean that a child is infectious, “with some positives reflecting bits of genetic material that may not be able to make someone sick,” or, on the other hand, “negatives reflecting low levels of virus that may still be infectious.”
Coronavirus update As of Wednesday, COVID-19 had infected 25,816,820 people worldwide, which mostly does not account for asymptomatic cases, and killed 858,381. The U.S. still has the world’s highest number of COVID-19 cases , followed by Brazil , India and Russia , according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.
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