Sept. 6, 2022 – Don’t count on a Runny nose.
A new study has shown that young children with COVID-19 have very few symptoms, even though they may have high levels of the virus.
Only 14% tested positive for AIDS in adults. SARSThe virus that causes COVID-19 (CoV-2), had no symptoms in children as young as 4 years old, according to the researchers.
This raises concerns that parents, childcare providers and preschools might not be seeing the degree of infection in seemingly healthy young children who have been exposed COVID-19, said Ruth A. Karron MD and co-authors in the articleJournal of the American Medical Association open.
The study included 690 participants from 175 Maryland homes who were closely followed between November 2020 and Oct 2021. Every week for 8 months, they completed online symptom checks and had PCR testing – which detects the presence of the virus causing COVID-19 – done with nasal swabs. For analysis, those with symptoms provided more swabs.
“What was different about our study [compared with previous studies]The intensity of our collection and the fact that we [tested those who did not have COVID symptoms],” Karron, a pediatrician and professor in the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said in an interview. “The fact that we were sampling every single week meant that we could pick up those early infections.”
Karron noted that the study focuses on young children. The study involved all households, which had at least one child aged 4 years. Only 256 of the 690 participants (37.1%) fell within this youngest age bracket. Other participants in the study included 100 children aged 5-17 (14.5%), and 334 adults 18-74 (48.4%).
The most likely to not have symptoms in their twenties were the youngest.
51 people had already tested positive by the end of the trial. coronavirus14 of them had no symptoms. It was found that children 4 years and younger who received COVID-19 were twice as likely not to have symptoms than infected adults (36% vs. 13%).
The relationship between symptoms and viral load – the amount of the virus that causes COVID in a person – also differed between adults and young children.
While adults with high viral loads – suggesting they were more contagious – typically had more severe COVID-19 symptoms, that was not the case with young kids. This means that even children who have no symptoms or mild symptoms, they could still be highly contagious.
Karron states that these findings can help parents and others make better choices. She says that even if young children don’t have symptoms, they should be tested for COVID-19 if they have been exposed to others with the disease. She recommends that you act on the results.
“If a family is infected with the virus, and the 2-year-old [has no symptoms], and people are thinking about a visit to elderly grandparents … one shouldn’t assume that the 2-year-old is uninfected,” Karron says. “That child should be tested along with other family members.”
She says that young children exposed at childcare facilities to COVID-19 should also be tested.
However, other experts disagreed.
“I question whether that effort is worth it,” says Dean Blumberg, MD, a professor and chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at UC Davis Health in Sacramento, CA.
He notes that recent FDA guidance for COVID-19 testing calls for three negative at-home antigen tests – which detect proteins, called antigens, from the virus that causes COVID-19 – to confirm lack of disease.
“That would take 4 days to get those tests done,” he says. “So, it’s a lot of testing. It’s a lot of record keeping, it’s inconvenient, it’s uncomfortable to be tested, and I just question whether it’s worth that effort.”
Are the findings still valid?
Blumberg also wonders if the almost one-year-old study reflects current events. pandemic landscape.
Although different opinions were expressed by the experts, they had similar views about vaccination.
“The most important thing that parents can do is get their kids vaccinated, be vaccinated themselves, and have everybody in the household vaccinated and up to date for all doses that are indicated,” Blumberg says.
Karron says that vaccination will become more important in coming months.
“Summer is ending; school is starting,” she says. “We’re going to be in large groups indoors again very soon. To keep young children safe, I think it’s really important for them to get vaccinated.”
