Children are not drivers of corona waves of infection, according to a recently published study on the risk of infection. However, many questions remain regarding the role of children in the pandemic.
The fact that children can get infected with the new corona virus is undisputed among researchers. For example, in an outbreak in a block of flats in Neukölln, around 40 percent of those infected were children – 40 out of 93 confirmed cases.
Often, however, children show no symptoms at all or the illnesses are similar to a normal cold or gastrointestinal upset. Difficult courses are much less common than, for example, the elderly. In Germany, according to the Robert Koch Institute, only three people with or under the corona virus have died since the pandemic began, who were under the age of 18. This differentiates the age distribution of Covid-19 from other infectious diseases, where children are sometimes considered to be the so-called drivers of the infection – they spread the virus to the general public.
The “Tübingen Study”
According to new studythat the state government commissioned from Baden-Württemberg, children do not play this role in the current infection process of the coronavirus – at least not in the federal state. The reason for the investigation was the question of whether daycare centers and schools should remain closed. However, no evidence has been found that children are particularly susceptible to the virus or cause contagion in the family and in the environment, said one of the study’s authors, Klaus-Michael Debatin, on Deutschlandfunk (Audio link). Debatin is the medical director of the children’s clinic at the Ulm University Hospital, which carried out the examination together with university hospitals in Heidelberg, Freiburg and Tübingen. He also advised that the discussion be more prudent. You learn a piece every day and have been putting together a puzzle for almost half a year.
For the study from Baden-Württemberg, almost 5,000 people without corona symptoms and without previous corona detection had been tested for the virus and for antibodies. There were around 2,500 children under the age of ten and one parent, each of whom had volunteered. A current infection with the coronavirus could only be found in one parent-child pair. 64 of those tested had formed antibodies and had gone through a corona infection largely unnoticed. Among them were 45 adults and 19 children. Baden-Württemberg took the study as the basis for further steps towards opening day-care centers and primary schools.
Different studies, different results
The Berlin virologist Drosten had come to a different conclusion in a study on the infectivity of children in April. His research suggests that children could be as contagious as adults. Children were able to detect as many viruses in the throat as adults.
Drosten concluded from this that the opening of schools and kindergartens should be approached carefully – and was partly criticized for this. Nevertheless, he holds on to his scientific knowledge and declared in episode 49 of his podcast “Das Coronavirus-Update“, the discussion about the closings of educational institutions is not yet over. It is important to name all the open points now, because, according to Drosten:” Maybe we cannot have virus-free schools. What does that mean? What does that mean for the teachers? What does this mean for those who are relatives of teachers or students and have risk factors? What does that mean for compulsory schooling? “Perhaps the debate in autumn would have been social and preliminary considerations had been made.
Drosten receives support for his scientific thesis that children have a similarly high viral load as adults, from other international studies. Recently has a new one Case report series from the USA demonstrated that infants under three months of age carry very high viral loads. They themselves are generally healthy and their respiratory tract is only slightly or not affected by the infection. Nevertheless, the researchers warn that contacts with them are likely to be associated with a high risk of infection.
However, the pure presence of viruses in the respiratory tract is not yet evidence that they are passed on just as strongly. That explained pediatricians and specialists in hygiene in one opinion from four specialist societies.
The Baden-Württemberg study does not answer this question either. Because of the early school and daycare closings at the beginning of the pandemic, many children hardly had any contacts outside of the family and therefore had little opportunity to become infected with the virus. The small number of children in the study from Baden-Württemberg who had already had an infection could be related to this.
One questioned whether schools and daycare centers should close again in the event of outbreaks Study of the “Institute for Labor Market and Vocational Research”. She considers school and daycare closures to be the most effective means of preventing the spread of the coronavirus. According to the authors, they have reduced the growth rate of confirmed infections by almost eight percentage points. According to the study, on the other hand, the restrictions in other areas such as retail, hospitality or hairdressing and cosmetics had little effect.
Other studies contradict this thesis. Researchers from ETH Zurich, for example, came in their investigation to the conclusionthat the closure of restaurants and shops as well as cinemas will bring some benefits. School closures, on the other hand, are not as efficient. For the survey, the researchers used data from Switzerland, other EU countries, the USA and Canada, among others. They admitted that the data had a large “spread” and only allowed a rough evaluation, as the Tages-Anzeiger reported.
Further investigations are ongoing
Further studies are therefore necessary. Prime Minister Söder has announced a comprehensive long-term study for Bavaria. Six university children’s clinics are expected to support the opening of schools and childcare facilities in the Free State by January 2021. The study is also intended to shed light on the effects of the pandemic on general child health.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, a large investigation into the corona infection process in children began in June. 40,000 saliva samples from children and staff are examined to better identify the path of Covid-19 infections. Results should be in July. A new study project has just started in Hessen. Here, parents test their children for 60 months at 60 daycare centers for the coronavirus. This is intended to draw conclusions about the spread of Sars-CoV-2 in the individual regions. Similar investigations are planned in Berlin. The first interim results are already available at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE): Antibodies against the coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 can be detected more frequently in older children than in younger children – that is the interim conclusion. Accordingly, older children between 10 and 18 years of age developed antibodies more often than those up to 9 years of age.
The final results of representative studies are already available abroad, for example in Sweden. There, the schools were not completely closed in the pandemic. First results with antibody tests show that the children have not experienced an infection less frequently than adults. However, it cannot be deduced from these results whether they have passed on the virus just as strongly. So far, the question remains unanswered.
You can read the Robert Koch Institute’s findings on children read here.
Pediatric Inflammatory Multisystem Syndrome (MIS-C)
U.S. researchers have published two more in-depth studies of a syndrome associated with coronavirus infections in children and adolescents. The studies published in the journal “New England Journal of Medicine” shed light on the so-called pediatric inflammatory multi-system syndrome, abbreviated MIS-C. To this end, the scientists evaluated the medical records of almost 300 children and young people under the age of 21 who were treated in the United States between March and May. Infection with the novel corona virus was found in all of them or there was an urgent suspicion of such an infection.
Britain warned of the Sars-CoV-2 syndrome in children in late April, and the CDC, the US health agency, followed in May. Around 1,000 cases of the syndrome have been registered worldwide, as Michael Levin from London’s Imperial College wrote in a commentary on the US studies. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control reported 230 cases in Europe by May 15. One child in France and one in the UK died of the syndrome.
The US studies now published show that the syndrome only occurs a few weeks after a corona infection. The study at the national level usually took 25 days; in the New York study, the cases occurred one month after the pandemic peaked in the US metropolis
(Stand 06.07.2020)
Further articles on the corona virus
We have a News blog created. In view of the large amount of information, this provides an overview of the most important current developments.
Vacation and leisure
+ Holidays: tent, caravan, holiday home: What the 2020 vacation could look like
+ Travel: The current regulations in Germany
+ Infections: What is the situation in the holiday countries
+ On the go: Which rules apply on the train and in the plane
+ Tourism: Travel customers can continue to request money back
Coronavirus pandemic numbers and data
+ Current developments: Corona virus numbers in Germany
+ Germany: Why the death rate from the corona virus is comparatively low in Germany
+ Undetected infected: The number of unreported cases of coronavirus infections
+ Mass events: Demos and the like have apparently hardly influenced the infection numbers
+ What numbers we give about the corona virus and why
+ Disinformation: Why Bill Gates has become the target of conspiracy theorists
Contagion and transmission
+ Mortality: How deadly is the corona virus?
+ Late effects: What are the long-term consequences of a corona infection?
Prevention: As is currently the case with a second wave of the corona virus
+ Children: What about the risk of infection and spread among them
+ Droplet infection or suspended particles: What role do aerosol particles play in transmission?
+ Spread: How dangerous are they Superspreaders in the corona pandemic?
+ Shopping cart and co .: How long the coronavirus stays on surfaces
+ Pregnancy: A transmission of Covid-19 to a fetus was demonstrated for the first time in France
Test and protection
+ Herbst: What to do if Corona and flu wave meet.
+ Tests: How useful are corona mass tests for everyone?
+ Tests: Where to be tested
+ Vaccination: That is the research
+ Treatment: How far is the search for drugs against Covid-19?
+ Face masks: What you should know about protective masks
You can also find the Dlf news on Twitter at: @DLFnews.
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