SARS-CoV-2, a novel coronavirus, can infect children and make them sick with COVID-19. They do appear to be less susceptible to infection than adults, though, and their symptoms are often milder. More research is needed to completely comprehend coronavirus in children and the role they play in virus transmission, while early signs show that children spread the viral less than adults.
Is the coronavirus immune in children?
COVID-19 infection has been recorded in newborns, children, and young adults of various ages. Despite this, studies regularly show that youngsters under the age of 18 account for just about 2% of all cases worldwide. [1]
One reason for the low numbers is that children’s symptoms are frequently milder than adults’, thus they are less likely to be examined (see below). Children, on the other hand, may be less likely to become infected in the first place, according to statistics from countries that have performed comprehensive population testing for the virus. Children under the age of nine years accounted for only 1% of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases in South Korea, whereas children aged ten to 19 accounted for 5.2 percent of cases. [2]
In Iceland, young children were less likely than adolescents or adults to test positive for SARS-CoV-2, and no cases were discovered in children under the age of ten in a random population screening.
In the Italian town of V, where 2.4 percent of people of all ages were discovered to be sick, no instances were found among 374 children under the age of ten who were tested for the virus. [4]
COVID-19 Symptoms in Children and Adolescents
Symptoms in children differ slightly from those in adults and are usually milder.
[9] Only around half of symptomatic youngsters have a cough or fever, which is less common than in adults. Upper respiratory symptoms, such as a runny nose or sore throat, are present in 30-40% of children, while diarrhoea and/or vomiting are found in roughly 10% of children (occasionally as the only symptom). [10]
In Hubei province, China, a review of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases among children under the age of 18 found that 55.4 percent exhibited mild symptoms or were asymptomatic; just 5.4 percent of cases in children were severe or critical, compared to 18.5 percent of cases in adults.
Although major sickness and death in children are uncommon, they do happen.
Critical illness developed in 0.4 percent of laboratory verified cases in children in the Hubei study.
The current worldwide reported death rate for children is 0.01 percent (corresponding to one in 10,000 cases)[1, which is significantly lower than all adult death rates estimations.
Children’s inflammatory syndrome
There is one potential consequence, aside from the general picture of milder COVID-19 sickness in youngsters. Following a modest increase in the number of critically unwell children with overlapping signs of toxic shock syndrome (a uncommon consequence of some bacterial infections) and atypical Kawasaki illness, the UK’s Paediatric Intensive Care Society issued an urgent alert to GPs in late April (a disorder in which the walls of the arteries become inflamed). [12] Fever, inflammation, and indications of altered organ function are all symptoms.
At the time of diagnosis of this multisystem inflammatory syndrome, some but not all of these youngsters tested positive for COVID-19; therefore, it is currently unknown if the COVID-19 virus or some other as yet unknown component is causing these uncommon symptoms.