82,524. That’s the total number of people infected with Covid-19 worldwide since it first appeared, according to data from Johns Hopkins University on Thursday. Among them, 2,810 people died and 33,212 are now healed. Figures which mainly concern adults; those under 19 represent only 2% of confirmed coronavirus cases. But why do children seem to be spared from this epidemic?
“The youngest are exposed like everyone else to the coronavirus but are very little affected, it is a fact. The justifications that we can bring are only hypotheses”, carefully explains to BFMTV.com Elise Launay, pediatric infectiologist .
More effective immune defenses
Several experts we contacted first suggest that the immune response of children is more effective than that of adults.
“Other coronaviruses are found in nature and infect the young every year, in the form, for example, of nasopharyngitis,” explains Professor Robert Cohen, pediatrician and infectious disease specialist. “Children are real reservoirs for flu and colds because they are very exposed in schools. They recover all the viruses that pass,” adds pediatrician Brigitte Virey.
By contracting these many diseases, they strengthen their immune defenses and could thus protect themselves against Covid-19.
In addition, infectious diseases are often more serious when they appear in adults, like chickenpox, measles or legionellosis. “The adult immune response may be more intense and therefore present the infection in a more serious form,” said Robert Cohen.
Covid-19s with little symptom
“We talk a lot about very serious cases but there may also be weaker ones that we do not assimilate to the coronavirus”, adds Brigitte Virey, who thus brings up another hypothesis: children could contract forms of coronavirus little symptoms leading to an underdiagnosis of pediatric cases.
“Right now, there are a lot of flu. It is possible that children will contract a fairly weak form of the Covid-19, which is assimilated to a flu, and therefore they go under the radars,” she observes. , while specifying that in this case, they can transmit the disease to another person.
“We probably miss many cases, the virus is certainly circulating faster than we think,” said the pediatrician, while citing the two cases of contamination in the Oise.
On Wednesday, a 60-year-old man infected with Covis-19 died at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital after being hospitalized in the Oise department of Creil. This Thursday, another patient is still hospitalized in intensive care in Amiens, in critical condition. “And for now, there is a big question mark about how they were infected,” said Brigitte Virey.
In general, the Covid-19 remains very mysterious for scientists, who however note a similarity with other coronaviruses like SARS and MERS: they had each affected very few children during previous epidemics. “But then again, even with hindsight, we do not know exactly why the children fell between the cracks,” concludes Elise Launay.
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