Since the beginning of the pandemic, parents have been reassured that if their children do get COVID-19, they’re unlikely to get really sick. And much of the data continues to support that idea. But as the pandemic spreads widely in many states and the beginning of the school year approaches, it’s only natural to wonder if your child is really at risk – and if they are, does that put your whole family at risk, too?
“This is a terrible, terrible illness,” says Lawrence Kleinman, MD, a professor and vice chair of the pediatrics department at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. “It began with a myth, and that myth has had persistent and troubling longevity. It’s in our consciousness that kids don’t get as sick, or it doesn’t matter as much.”
What the Numbers Show
According to the CDC, only 6.6% of all confirmed cases in the U.S. have been in children under 18 years old. Regionally, though, the numbers look different. According to an analysis by Bloomberg News, in places where the virus is surging, children account for 10% or more of cases.
Figures from Florida’s Department of Health show that as of July 9, 31% of all children tested in the state were positive for the coronavirus. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the virus is on the rise among kids.
“A high positivity rate means you’re not testing enough,” says Beth Pathak, PhD, an epidemiologist and co-founder of The COVKID Project, which seeks to track all pediatric cases in the U.S. “The World Health Organization recommends that testing and community control of the virus be expanded until the test positivity rate is less than 5%.” When nearly one-third of kids’ tests come back positive, it indicates that tests are only given to children who are showing symptoms, Pathak explains. Since we know many kids have mild or no symptoms at all, there must be considerably more, untested cases in the community.
The COVKID Project’s nationwide total shows nearly 300,000 confirmed cases are aged 0-19. But by basing their models on detailed data from China, they estimated that more than 1.9 million children have already caught the virus. That’s only 2.6% of all the kids in this country.
“We found that for every 2,381 kids who get infected—not sick, just testing positive for the virus—one child will become critically ill and need to be admitted to the ICU,” says Pathak.
Those may sound like low odds, but there are 74 million children in the United States. If we reach 10% of children infected, The COVKID Project says we could see 20,000 hospitalized. And by the time we approach herd immunity, that number would be closer to 120,000 children so severely ill they need to be in the hospital.
“Childhood cancer is rare but that doesn’t mean it’s no big deal,” says Pathak. “We need to talk about COVID in a way that doesn’t minimize the losses, and also doesn’t exaggerate the risk.”
What COVID Looks Like in Kids
It does appear that children are less likely to develop symptoms than adults. A study in the journal Nature Medicine looked at data from six different countries. It found that when children are infected, only one in five develops symptoms. Compare that to people over 70, who showed symptoms nearly 70% of the time.
As far as symptoms go, COVID in children looks similar to the disease in adults. The most common ones include: Children may have more diarrhea and other stomach issues than adults, and they may be more likely to have fatigue as a primary symptom, says Katherine Connor, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
“The big difference is that kids seem to get a milder illness, often with no symptoms,” she says. Of the more than 140,000 deaths due to COVID in this country, 75 have been in children, says The COVKID Project. Fewer than 1,000 have needed the ICU, according to the available data.
Among children who developed a severe case of COVID, several risk factors have emerged. Those include obesity, diabetes, asthma and chronic lung disease, having a suppressed immune system, congenital heart disease, and serious genetic, neurologic, or metabolic disorders. But Kleinman cautions against being too relaxed if your child doesn’t have any of those issues: “Of those in the ICU, 17% had nothing. So it doesn’t mean the other side is safe,” he says.
Doctors can’t yet explain why so many infected children don’t show symptoms. E.R. Chulie Ulloa, MD, MSc, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and assistant professor at the UC Irvine School of Medicine, says researchers are investigating several possibilities. They include differences in the respiratory tract or the immune system, viral interference—the idea that kids get so many other viruses, they may be blocking the novel coronavirus—and even ordinary childhood vaccines.
“There's been some data to suggest that immunization to other common childhood infections confers a kind of cross-protection,” Ulloa says.
The piece goes on to talk about other similar diseases, and how to differentiate them.
The point here - for me anyway - is that we don't know what we don't know, and until we get a much better look at what's going on, we have to err on the side of caution.
And of course, that's exactly the opposite of what Repubs are saying, while they're doing exactly that with own kids.
Rick Scott says open the schools, but his own kids will be at home distance-learning.
Ron DeSantis says open the schools, but his own kids will be at home distance-learning.
45* says open the schools, but Barron will be at home distance-learning.
Who're the idiots voting for these idiots?
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