Kids Can Carry Up to 100 Times More Coronavirus Than Adults
For the longest time, we've know that kids are pretty efficient little disease spreaders. Personally, I have never been sick on a regular basis until my son starting going to school. I have no doubt that he has brought home more than (mostly) good grades and passed it on to one or more members of the household.
That's why the results of a new study conducted at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago aren't the most surprising. To be sure, finding out that kids under 5 years of age are able to carry 10 to 100 times the amount Coronavirus of as infected adults and older children is a surprise. Not that they could potentially bring it home, but that they can bring so much of it home.
135 patients who showed early COVID-19 symptoms were tested with nasal swabs within one week of the onset of these symptoms. These new findings seem to counteract previous assumptions that children had negligible effects on the transmission of the virus. You can see the full results of the study published by the JAMA Network here.
Authors of the study noted that the results of their study show:
“...a 10-fold to 100-fold greater amount of SARS-CoV-2 in the upper respiratory tract of young children.”
These findings could potentially change everything from policy in place to protect students and staff alike at schools set to open soon to the way an eventual vaccine is administered.