RIVM: “Children play limited role in the spread of coronavirus”

–

It is a question that preoccupied everyone, especially professionals who work with children: do children transmit the coronavirus easily or not? According to research by the RIVM, children do not play an important role in the transmission of COVID 19 (coronavirus).

Research

This is concluded from the initial results of this study, which followed 54 families with one or more corona patients. According to the RIVM, the research shows that the virus is mainly spread between adults of about the same age. Children are infected, but less often than adults. And within families, especially parents have infected their children and not the other way around.

It was striking that in none of the families examined the first infected patient was a child under the age of twelve. According to the RIVM, it often concerned families with a care worker who had tested positive.

International research

The results confirm the picture from other international studies, de Volkskrant reports. For example, of all nearly 47 thousand covid cases registered in our country, less than 2 percent are younger than twenty. Of all patients who ended up in the hospital, only 0.7 percent are children or teenagers.

Not an important role

“The results of the research in Dutch families confirm the picture that children do not play an important role in the transmission of the virus. They can get sick, but often their complaints are very mild, “RIVM reports to the NOS. “With the flu virus, you see that children often transmit the virus to each other or to adults. That seems much less the case with the new coronavirus. “

Follow-up research

RIVM has published the results in the Dutch Journal of Medicine. The study continues with fifty new families. Families with children who tested positive were examined instead of families with infected care workers.

–