New Evidence Suggests Young Children Spread Covid-19 More Efficiently Than Adults
Two new studies, though from different parts of the world, have arrived at the same conclusion: that young children not only transmit SARS-CoV-2 efficiently, but may be major drivers of the pandemic as well.
Unfortunately, the JAMA article didn't go all the way to that conclusion - because the swab data wasn't enough. While the kids have tons of CoVid in their noses, other studies show that CoVid doesn't take root in children's lungs (I don't know about the age group specifics). I can see how the reporter thought it stood to reason, though.
Since it really is the lungs that are expelling when we shout, breathe, sing and talk, that needs to be known. And since kids have less powerful lungs (and not much CoVId in them in the first place, apparently), they do not seem to propel as many virions and certainly not as far.
Interestingly, there are studies showing that kids' noses take on new viruses very well, so that the lung thing doesn't happen - but also, apparently kids' lungs do not have the same structure as older lungs, so that CoVId isn't causing the body-wide disease nor is it causing much lung damage in kids.
There are definitely exceptions - and bigger kids (I've read any kid 10 and over) would have the ability to propel out of their lungs (if it got there). But the studies show that it's the 3-5 year olds (more or less) who have so many virions in their lungs, and yet, we have almost no pre-school outbreaks so far. It's really weird, but I'm guessing more study is needed about the lungs.
Thing is, the techniques used to find out how much virus is in the lungs are very invasive and cannot be done on children merely for diagnostic purposes. MRI is used for imaging in adults. Not all adults get CoVid in their lungs either, but those who do range from moderately to severely ill.
So
sneezing would be the way kids transmit CoVid, I would think. Not so much coughing. Before this pandemic I would have said that surely most parents would keep their kids home if they were sneezing - but I know longer believe that. Also, allergies are constant in the classroom, so a kid with lots of CoVId who is sneezing for some other reason..would still spread it.
Kids would also get it on their hands a lot, I'd think.
