CHENNAI: Does the SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19, not affect children?
Chinese researchers have found that not a single child was infected by the virus in Wuhan, where the disease broke out, between November 2019 and the second week of January. A study of 1,099 persons infected across China showed that just 0.9 per cent of them were children under the age of nine.
Research so far has shown that the virus does affect children, but a majority of them do not show the same symptoms as adults. Many of them do not fall sick unlike adults.
“They are protected for some unknown reason,” says Dr Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist at the World Health Organization. “Maybe they have some antibodies... we don’t know yet.”
Interestingly, the same was the case during the SARS outbreak of 2003, caused by a close cousin of CoV-2.
“Globally, less than 10 per cent of those diagnosed with SARS were children, and only 5 per cent of them required intensive care,” says an analysis by science publication The Scientist. “Many children do get infected, but they may not show symptoms or fall sick like adults,” says Soumya, who was addressing an International Update on COVID-19, organised by Dr MGR Medical University and Indian Medical Association, Tamil Nadu Branch, via video conference. “However, children can still transmit the infection to others. So, shutting down schools was a wise thing to do.”
Globally, scientists have attributed this peculiar trend to several possibilities: children have a stronger immune system compared to adults, possible cross-immunity in kids due to common cold and flu, and ageing lungs in adults.
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