Children don’t pose increased Covid risk to their parents

CHILDREN are not an increased Covid risk to adults they live with, a major study has concluded.

Scientists found parents who share a home with under-18s were no more likely to be admitted to hospital or die of coronavirus during the first wave of the pandemic.

The study of 12 million people puts to rest one of the key fears about keeping schools open.

And the researchers found adults living with children aged up to 11 were actually 25 per cent less likely to die of Covid than those who did not.

They said this was almost entirely because those with youngsters tend to live healthier lives.

Adults with children aged 12 to 18 had a marginal increased risk of catching the virus – 8 per cent higher than those without children.

But it did not translate into an increased risk of hospitalisation or death, said the experts from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Oxford.

For adults over the age of 65 living with youngsters there was no increased risk of infection or death – no matter how old the children.

This suggests grandparents in multi-generational households are not put at risk.

Professor Liam Smeeth, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: ‘If we can keep schools open it is a really important thing for this generation of young people. But we have to look at possible risks.

‘The take home message is there is no evidence of a harmful effect of living with kids of school age.’

The study ran between February and August, allowing the researchers to compare infection rates before schools closed in March and after the lockdown was imposed.

Prof Smeeth acknowledged that does not include rates after schools reopened in September, but said he was confident further data is unlikely to change their conclusions.

Previous studies have suggested older teenagers in secondary school and the sixth form have high rates of ‘viral shedding’ and they may put others at risk.

But the researchers found the science is far from proven.

Professor Stephen Evans, of the LSHTM, said the team had actually started with the hypothesis that parents of children might actually have some immunity against coronavirus because they have been repeatedly exposed to coughs and colds. He said they had found this was actually unlikely – with parents having neither a ‘net benefit’ nor a ‘net harm’ in respects to coronavirus risk. But he added: ‘We are still left with a puzzle as to why children do have low risk of Covid-19.’

The findings come after a recent study involving 300,000 Scottish healthcare workers and their households indicated living with children does not place adults at greater risk of the virus.

The new study, published on the Medrxiv website, has not yet been peer reviewed.