Students will be safe at school with the risk of harm ‘tiny’, says major UK study

CORONAVIRUS does not kill healthy children and they face only a ‘tiny’ risk of severe illness, according to the world’s largest study into the issue.

Experts said death was ‘vanishingly rare’ among children and teenagers, and going to school posed ‘no risk at all’ for most youngsters.

The research looked at data from 70,000 patients with Covid-19 admitted to NHS hospitals in the UK, finding that less than 1% were aged 19 or under.

Six of the 651 children hospitalised with coronavirus died – all of whom had existing life-limiting health conditions.

The authors said the ‘extremely reassuring’ findings meant parents should have ‘absolute confidence’ that it was safe for children to go back to school this week.

Study author Calum Semple, professor in child health at the University of Liverpool, said: ‘Severe disease is rare, death is vanishingly rare.

‘Parents should be confident that children are not going to be in direct harm by going into school.

‘We do know that they are at harm by being kept away from school.’

Nearly one in five children admitted to hospital with the virus needed critical care, the study found. Black children, obese children, and newborn babies face a slightly higher risk of being admitted to intensive care.

But the authors said the overall risk of children being hospitalised was ‘tiny’, the risk of needing critical care was ‘even tinier’, and the death rate was ‘staggeringly low’.

Experts stressed that the death toll among children was far lower than for infections such as chickenpox, sepsis, meningitis and flu.

Yesterday, the World Health Organization joined calls for schools to reopen, describing it as one of its top priorities.

Dr Hans Kluge, its regional director for Europe, said: ‘This has been the biggest disruption in education in history, with 1.6billion learners affected in more than 190 countries.

‘School settings have not been a main contributor to the epidemic.’

The UK study, published in the British Medical Journal and partly funded by the British department of health, was based on data from patients admitted to 138 hospitals between March and July this year.

‘Parents should be confident’