As India along with other countries deliberate whether schools and colleges be reopened in the backdrop of spiraling Covid-19 cases, a new study in South Korea has warned that teens are more likely to spread the virus within a household than younger children and adults.
In other words, the study published on the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention website has pointed out that while children younger than age 10 donot transmit the virus, it is often those between the ages of 10 and 19 who can spread the disease at least as well as adults do.
The findings suggest that as schools reopen, communities will see clusters of infection take root that include children of all ages, several experts cautioned.
“I fear that there has been this sense that kids just won’t get infected or don’t get infected in the same way as adults and that, therefore, they’re almost like a bubbled population,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.
“There will be transmission,” Osterholm said. “What we have to do is accept that now and include that in our plans.”
South Korean researchers identified 5,706 people who were the first to report Covid-19 symptoms in their households between January 20 and March 27, when schools were closed, and then traced the 59,073 contacts of these “index cases.”
They tested all of the household contacts of each patient, regardless of symptoms, but only tested symptomatic contacts outside the household.
The first person in a household to develop symptoms is not necessarily the first to have been infected, and the researchers acknowledged this limitation. Children are also less likely than adults to show symptoms, so the study may have underestimated the number of children who set off the chain of transmission within their households.
Children under age 10 were roughly half as likely as adults to spread the virus to others, consistent with other studies. That may be because children generally exhale less air — and therefore less virus-laden air — or because they exhale that air closer to the ground, making it less likely that adults would breathe it in.
The study is more worrisome for children in middle and high school.
This group was even more likely to infect others than adults were, the study found. But some experts said that finding may be a fluke or may stem from the children’s behaviors.
The study holds importance for India too where the Government is under intense pressure to reopen the schools and colleges. Recently, Union HRD Minister Ramesh Nishank Pokhriyal had said that these educational instituteswhich have remained closed since around March 16 will reopen after August 2020. This is likely to impact around 33 crore students.