Children are just as likely to be infected by the coronavirus, study suggests

It had been thought that children were at least partially immune from coronavirus, now a new danger has emerged – kids could actually be spreading the disease.

A new study suggests children are just as likely to get infected with the coronavirus as adults, heightening concerns that they could be spreading the disease. It could mean kids are banned from places with vulnerable adults, such as aged care facilities.

Authorities have previously noted that few children had been identified among the confirmed cases but it was unclear whether this was because their symptoms were mild or whether they were less susceptible to the disease.

Now a new study of infections in the Chinese province of Shenzhen found children are at a similar risk of infection as the general population, they are just less likely to have severe symptoms.

This means children with mild symptoms could be unknowingly spreading the virus.

On Thursday, NSW chief medical officer Kerry Chant advised all aged care facilities to suspend visits of groups of children, amid uncertainty about the “role of children in transmitting COVID-19”.

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Professor Peter Collignon, infectious diseases physician at Canberra Hospital, said it wouldn’t be possible to know how susceptible children were to catching coronavirus until an antibody test was available that would accurately show how many people had asymptomatic infections.

This will likely be available in a couple of months.

“Probably what is happening is that children are getting less severe symptoms,” he told news.com.au. “With swine flu in 2009, a lot of children, when blood tests became available, were found to be infected but they had nil or minimal symptoms.

“But they are potentially then a vehicle for the spread of the disease.”

A child has their temperature taken at Najaf International Airport on February 21 after returning to Iraq from Iran. Picture: Haidar Hamdani/AFP

It’s unclear why children were less likely to get a severe form of the disease but Prof Collignon said it may be due to a number of reasons.

The immune systems of older people likely didn’t function as well and they were also more likely to have underlying diseases such as heart or lung disease.

“The viral infection could be the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said.

Prof Collignon said the same pattern could be seen in influenza cases, where young people get sick more often but don’t get severe illness, whereas older people were more likely to die.

“Almost 80 per cent of those who die in Australia from influenza are over the age of 70 years,” he said.

Prof Collignon said authorities were likely to follow the principles of influenza prevention in advising aged care centres to stop bringing large groups of children through as visitors.

“They are being a bit overcautious but because we don’t have more data, that’s not unreasonable at this point in time,” he said.

A previous report released by the World Health Organisation found about 20 per cent of people aged over 80 years old died from the coronavirus.

In contrast, only 2.7 per cent of people aged under 19 years old developed severe or critical disease.

“Those over the age of 50 are most at risk and the risk goes up markedly with age,” Prof Collignon said. “Particularly those under 30, they have a very low death rate.”

Fortunately the infection rate among family members is still only about 15 per cent.

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Prof Collignon believes that data from Singapore and China suggested the virus could be controlled.

“Their epidemic curves are going down,” he said. “It’s not impossible that this can be controlled.

“Even in Australia, while there has been transmission from person to person, the numbers are still low.

“I don’t think this is as bad as a lot of people have suggested: that we could see 100,000 people die in Australia and that it could spread to 60 per cent of the population. My view is the data doesn’t support that.”