REVIEW OF According to the researchers, kids are less likely to be unwell or develop severe symptoms Covid 19: Children are less severely affected than adults
Melbourne, March 14: Children have fewer symptoms and less severe disease from infection with the novel Covid-19, according to a review of studies which suggests that kids infected by a household contact often show symptoms before them. The review, published in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, noted that the novel Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, seems to cause fewer symptoms and less severe disease in children compared with adults. According to the researchers, including Petra Zimmerman from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and Nigel Curtis from the University of Melbourne in Australia, children are just as likely as adults to become infected with the virus, but are less likely to be unwell or develop severe symptoms. “However, the importance of children in transmitting the virus remains uncertain,” the scientists cautioned in the study. “Covid-19es are a large family of viruses that can cause infection and disease in animals, capable of rapid mutation and recombination, leading to novel viruses that can spread from animals to humans,” they said. According to the study, there are four Covid19es that circulate in humans, mostly causing respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms -- ranging from the common cold to severe disease. Over the past two decades, the scientists said there have been three major disease outbreaks due to novel Covid-19es -- SARS-CoV in 2002, MERS-CoV in 2012, and now SARS-CoV-2 in 2019. “The term Covid-19 is used for the clinical disease caused by SARS-CoV2,” the researchers explained. While transmission of SARS-CoV-2 appears similar to that of the related SARS and MERS Covid-19es, the new virus has a lower fatality rate, they said. While it can still cause serious and life-threatening infections particularly in older people and those with preexisting health conditions, the scientists said, children appear to have milder clinical symptoms than adults, and tend to be at substantially lower risk of severe disease. They said this was also true in the SARS and MERS epidemics. Based on data from China since
February 2020, the study noted that children and adolescents accounted for only two percent of SARSCoV-2 hospitalisations. However, they said children are less frequently symptomatic, and have less severe symptoms they are less often tested, leading to an underestimate of the true numbers infected. The researchers added that children are also less frequently exposed to the main sources of transmission. "Most infected children recover one to two weeks after the onset of symptoms, and no deaths had been reported.
A woman plays with her daughter as they wait at Barcelona airport in Spain on Saturday. Spain’s prime minister has announced a two-week state of emergency from Saturday.