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| School reopening-Children Role in Spreading Coronavirus. |
Key Notes
Schools are starting to
resume-However, scientist are still trying to establish the relation between
Kids and their role in spreading coronavirus.
The scientists are still pursing the
answer of the question about the role of children in scaling the coronavirus
since early days of covid-19 outbreak.
Currently, the announcement by few countries to reopen the schools after
weeks in lockdown, scientists are again approaching to this key question’s
answer.
Children hold a very small portion in
Covid-19 cases-The percentage of reported infections in china, Italy, and
United States is less than 2%-That is under the age of 18 years.
The figure represents that children
are less likely than adults are get infected and spread virus draw a line of
division among researchers. Growing
number of evidence supports the statement that children are at low risks than
adults during rise in scale of Covid-19. The available data strengthen the
evidence that kids are not responsible for majority transmission of
covid-19-supporting the decision of reopening of School, said Alasdair Munro, a
pediatric infectious-disease Scientists at University Hospital Southampton, UK
Kids in Germany and Denmark have
already resumed the schools, and students in some part of Australia and France
are planning to rejoin the school gradually over the upcoming weeks.
Some researches criticize the quickly
get back to classrooms. They argue that many infection rates in children is low
because they haven’t been exposed to virus as much because the schools are shut
down for fighting with Covid-19. The second argument is that children are not
tested as adults due to mild or o symptoms.
There is no such a strong biological
or epidemiological evidence that supports believe that children don’t suffered
from Covid-19, according to Gray Wong, a paediatric respiratory medicine at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong. Needless to say there is community
transference in adult people, so reopening of schools will facilitate the
community transmission as well, as respiratory viruses are more danger in
schools and day cares. He suggests that best surveillance and testing systems
should be available before resuming the school.
If children are in driving mode in
spreading the virus, the infection rate will be explosive in few weeks in
countries where the schools are already functional, say researchers.
For closing debate on one conclusive
point, it will call for high-quality studies based on large scale
population-Few are already under ways-that focus on the presence of antibodies
in the blood as marker of last infection.
Some other scientist are focusing on
children’s immune response in their study to find out the reasons why they
milder symptoms than adults when suffered or infected, and further that offer
clues to potential therapies.
Responsive Debate
Referring to a published study on 27th
April in the Lancet1, which was early, posted as preprint in March, analyzed
households having confirmed covid-19 cases in Shenzhen, China. Finding of this study reveals that kids
younger than ten were infected by coronavirus as likely as adults, but have
less likely severe symptoms.
That study or preprint really scared
everyone, says Munro, because he was one of them who suggested that children
could be silently transmitting the virus.
But the studies from other part of the
world such as South Korea, Italy, and Iceland where testing was conducted on
more large scale, have shown low infection rate among kids. Some studies from
China go in favour of the evidence that children are less risky to covid-19
virus. Another one, published on 29 April, studied data from Hunan, where the
people having infections have been traced and tested for virus. This study reveals
that for every infected child under the age of 15, there were almost 3 people
infected between the ages of 20 and 64.
However, the data related to teenagers
aged 15 years or older, suggests that the risk of get into infected is same as
in case of adults, says Munro.
Images
Transmission/Spreading Risks
Even few well understood that whether
infected child spread virus as equal pace as adults. A study carried out in
French Alps finds that a nine year old child having symptoms of coronavirus and
allowing him to attend three schools and skiing class, but no one infected from
him. It would be almost unheard if an adult infected one exposed to that many
people and failed to infect anyone else, says Munro.
Another study, yet unpublished,
conducted by Kirsty Short, a virologist at the University of Queensland in
Brisbane, Australia, based on meta-analysis of several households including
some countries that had not closed the schools at time like Singapore. She
inferred that Kids are rarely effective in transmission of coronavirus that is
covid-19 breakout among the other people of home; she was the first who
identified the case in only 8% households, roughly. Comparing with H5N1 avian
influenza outbreaks, the first case had discovered in some 50% of households,
according to research.
The households based studies
reconfirming that if there are lots of infected children, they become the cause
of bringing infections to the others even they are not going to home, says
Munro.
Wong point out that researches
biasedness, sampling procedures were not adopted at the time of selection of
households but just picked from the known infected adult there. So it is hard
to find out that who introduced the virus, he added. The closure of schools and
day-cares could help to give the answer of the question why children aren’t
often main carrier of virus-SARS-CoV-2. Other respiratory virus can transfer to
adults from kids and back, so I do not believe that this virus shows different
behavior, says Munro.
The two studies have reached the same
inference that presence of Covid-19 symptoms in children has same level of RNA
viral as in adults. Such results call for caution against an unlimited
re-opening of kindergartens and schools in present situation. Children may be
as virulent as adults, says Christian Drosten, a virologist at the Charite
Hospital in Berlin. The presence of high level of viral RNA is a good indicator
measuring how infectious a person is, notes Harish Nair, an epidemiologist at
the University of Edinburgh, UK.
But few studies proves the
transmission from school to community level, but its scale is limited,
according to an ongoing investigation Australian Report, and
much lower when comparing with other respiratory viruses like influenza. A
sample of more than 850 people from New South Wale who were in contact with 9
students and 9 staff members infected with covid-19 in primary and high
school-only two cases of covid-19 were observed among them, both in Children.
Based on the prevalent facts, Kids
should allowed to rejoin the school, says Munro. Children have lots to lose
when comparing with gain from lockdown imposition,” not only loss of education
but also deprived from social support as free school meals, he adds.
Schools resuming doesn’t mean get back
to normal, says Short. This decision is associated with lots of restrictions,
precautions, and changes such as closing play grounds, to reduce transmission
risks, she adds. As schools reopen, the studies covering transmission risks
will be important, says Wong.
In Netherlands, researchers plan to
screen this aspect as well as schools open gradually in upcoming weeks.
Immune Response
Scientists do believe that children
show more resistance towards Covid-19 than adults. Although, the majority of
infected kids have mild or no symptoms, but some do faces severe ill or even
die. There are several reports that quoted small number of children in London
and New York getting suffer from an ill similar to the rare childhood Kawasaki
disease.
The linking of Covid-19 with Kawasaki
disease wouldn’t be surprise news, as many other viral diseases already been
associated with it, says Wong. If this connection proves to be true, it could
have been missed in China, Japan, and South Korea because Kawasaki disease is
highly widespread in Asia, he says.
One belief for why children have
milder signs is that children’s lungs might have less or few mature ACE2
receptors, proteins that SARS-CoV-2 needs to transmit into the cell, according
to the Wong. But to endorse it, scientists would need to study tissues sample
from children, and these are very hard to get, says Wong.
Some others proposed that children are
easily accessible to virus family other than covid-19 like those that become
the cause of common cold, which saves them from serious disease.
Wong Recommends those children might
produce more suitable strong immune resistance against infection-but not enough
strong that it causes major damages to their organs. His primary analysis of
300 covid-19 infected individuals has helped him to draw the conclusion that
Kids generate highly low level of cytokines, proteins released by the immune
system. Patients with severe disease, irrespective of age, tend to have high
level of cytokines, he says. But still there is a need to determine the cause
and effect. Is higher level of cytokines reason of their infection, are they
infected because they have higher level of cytokines?
Note: Plenty of coronavirus news are circulating around the globe, and on the same time many scientists around the globe are busy in scrambling ways to find the coronavirus vaccine as soon as possible.
Note: Plenty of coronavirus news are circulating around the globe, and on the same time many scientists around the globe are busy in scrambling ways to find the coronavirus vaccine as soon as possible.
Courteous: Smriti Mallapaty