How Covid 19 Impacts Children

•  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends K-12 schools reopen this fall, as health risks should be weighed against the detriment of being kept home.
• The closing of schools impacts low-income and minority children and those with disabilities who may rely more on programs like school lunch and after-school care.
• Students’ grades grades slip, mental and physical health suffers, socializing is lost, and many are falling behind on their routine vaccines.
• A large study is now underway in the United States to understand how COVID-19 infects children.
• According to CDC only 2 percent of domestic COVID-19 cases have occurred in children under 18 and 20 children have died under the age of 5 in the U.S.

As schools prepare to reopen, experts weigh in on whether youth protects against the virus, and how readily kids can spread it to adults, writes Sarah Gibbens for National Geographic.

Effects of Covid 19 on children 

Graham, says that the virus seems to go easy on kids has not fundamentally advanced since then.

Even with increased testing showing that more kids are capable of contracting the virus.

Experts can only theorize as to why children are largely spared the intense version of COVID-19 that strikes so many adults.

Children can be carriers

One robust study of nearly 65,000 kids published by the South Korean Center for Disease Control last week showed that children in the 10- to 19-year-old age range could spread COVID-19 within households just as effectively as adults.

A small percentage of minors who test positive for COVID-19 develop a life-threatening condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), and it’s unclear if the disease has other long-term consequences.

“It leaves lasting scars on the lungs, and can lead to more severe illness down the line,” says Graham. But, she adds, “those kinds of things will have to be studied on a more long-term basis with children who have recovered from the disease.”

And because youth have largely been spared such severe illness, “there’s been a lot less research about them and a lot less testing,” says Tschudy.

Various studies on children

However, it’s not out of the question that a child under 10 could transmit the virus.

One study found very young children, including infants, left behind traces of the virus, though it’s not clear how infectious these remnants were.

But another study tracked a COVID-19 positive nine-year-old who visited three schools without transmitting the virus.

Childcare centers that remained open during the pandemic have had a range of experiences, from large outbreaks at camps to infection-free daycare centers.

How children are managed seems to play a large role in transmission.

Children may breathe out with less force

One theory for why children may be less likely to spread the disease to others has to do with the fact that COVID-19 primarily spreads through the droplets you breathe out, and children may breathe out with less force, and closer to the ground.

Why don’t under-10s seem to get as sick?

One prevailing theory for children under 10 don’t seem to get as sick has to do with an enzyme called ACE2. When SARS-CoV-2 enters the body, the spikey proteins encircling the virus latch on to ACE2 like a key fitting into a lock.

“One of the theories is that children have the [ACE2] receptors for this virus more in the nose [and] in the upper respiratory system than in the lungs, and adults have these receptors in the lungs,” says Elizabeth Barnett, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Boston Medical Center and professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine.

Kids tend to have lower cytokine levels to protect them from such storms, says Tschudy, possibly because, “young children are exposed to new infections all the time, so when their bodies are exposed to a new virus like COVID-19, their immune systems may be primed to respond just strong enough to fight the virus and not cause their bodies harm.”

Some children face higher risks

“The vast majority of children with severe COVID tend to have other risk factors,” says Philip Zachariah, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Columbia University and epidemiologist at New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital.

In a study he published in early June, Zachariah reviewed the cases of 50 children who were admitted for COVID-19.

All but one child recovered. Obesity in children over two was associated with more severe manifestations of the disease, though Zachariah emphasizes that this may simply reflect the neighborhoods served by New York-Presbyterian.

“I think the data is generally consistent with the fact that lower-income kids and racial minorities are infected more,” he says.

Overall, he says, even young kids who do get sick seem more likely to recover than sick adults. And the same ways adults stay safe—social distancing, wearing masks, and hand washing—will ultimately help kids contain the virus.

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