Can children be silent spreaders of the coronavirus? The topic, much debated since the beginning of the extremely topical pandemic in view of the opening of schools. A study just published on Journal of Pediatricsby a group of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital efrom Mass General Hospital for Children concludes that children and young people play a much larger role in the spread of SARS CoV-2 than previously thought.
(Below is the comment to the news by Antonio Scurati)
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The high viral load
In the research carried out on 192 children and young people aged between 0 and 22 it emerged that Infected children, even asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic, had a significantly higher viral load in the airways than adults in ICU seriously ill with Covid-19. And this is despite the fact that younger people develop the disease less because they have fewer immune receptors for Sars-CoV-2. The viral load was particularly high in the two days preceding the onset of symptoms, for those who presented them. According to the researchers, there was no correlation between age and viral load: both infants and young adults can carry high virus loads. I didn’t expect the viral load to be that high – he commented Lael Yonker director of the Center for Cystic Fibrosis al Massachusetts General Hospital and lead author of the study – and there are “Healthy children” who are walking around with a high viral load of Sars-CoV-2.
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Asymptomatic carrier children
Generally, for infectious diseases, the higher the viral load the higher the risk of contagion. Not the first time viral load in children is measured. They had done it German researchers a few months ago discovering that it was comparable to that of adults. instead of a few days ago another American research published on Jama which concluded that Infected children under the age of 5 can have levels of viral RNA equal to or even up to 100 times higher in their nose and throat than adults. Children are not immune to this infection – adds another author, Alessio Fasano, pediatrician at Harvard Medical School – and we cannot exclude them as asymptomatic carriers of the virus that they can spread at home or at school. In the United States, where the spread of the virus still skyrockets in the school district of Cherokee County in Georgia, north of Atlanta, after two weeks of lessons there have been 100 cases of Covid-19 and 1600 students have been sent home. quarantine. Other states have had to temporarily close schools for the same reason.
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The transmission of the flu
Surely children, precisely because they have fewer receptors, get sick less severely than adults – confirms Gianvincenzo Zuccotti, president of the Faculty of Medicine at the State University and director of the department of Pediatrics and First Aid at the Buzzi hospital in Milan – but it cannot be said that they are unable to transmit the infection because it would go in the opposite direction to what happens every year during the flu season, when it is the little ones who are most contagious. Precisely to avoid confusion in the diagnosis and reduce the co-circulation of viruses, the director of Buzzi recommends vaccination against influenza for children and adults.
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The trend of studies must be interpreted
From clinical experience – he adds Angelo Ravelli, pediatrician at Gaslini in Genoa and secretary of the rheumatology study group of the Italian Society of Pediatrics – the higher viral load is directly proportional to the severity of the symptoms and it seems unlikely that asymptomatic children are more dangerous than seriously ill adults. Unfortunately there are many studies on viral loads and few on contagiousness. The researches are many, sometimes contradictory and not very overlapping in terms of method. The single study should not be read but the trend interpreted especially when major decisions are made such as reopening schools. What we know so far that transmission capacity appears to increase with age.
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20 August 2020 (change August 20, 2020 | 14:37)
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