Homeoffice, less shopping, no party – life in times of Corona is difficult. It also doesn’t make it easier that playgrounds in some cities are now cordoned off. And why should children no longer play with each other – even though they are less likely to become seriously ill than adults? The infectious disease specialist Reinhard Berner, director of the clinic and polyclinic for pediatric and adolescent medicine at the University Hospital Dresden, explains on the phone what parents now have to watch out for.
WORLD: There are now many sick people in Italy – do you know anything about sick children?
Reinhard Berner: I have close contact with doctors in Lombardy, Brescia and Bergamo. They also do not see high numbers of illnesses in children who were so seriously ill that they have to go to the hospital. The statement that the WHO has published that children can also be seriously ill must perhaps be put in the right light: Yes, they can be ill, also difficult. But in total, unlike older people, they are not a particularly vulnerable group. In one of the two studies from Wuhan, about five percent of the affected children were severe, and about 0.5 percent of the affected children were critically ill.
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