A study today in Clinical Infectious Diseases conducted across 12 tertiary care pediatric hospitals in Canada and the United States shows that asymptomatic children with COVID-19, especially preschoolers, contribute significantly to household transmission.
The researchers discovered that 10.6% of exposed household contacts developed symptomatic illness within 14 days of exposure to asymptomatic test-positive children, a rate higher than expected.
“We determined that the risk of developing symptomatic illness within 14 days was 5 times greater among household contacts of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2–positive children,” the authors wrote.
They also found that 6 of 77 asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2–infected children during a 3-month follow-up developed long COVID, or 7.8% of them.
Comments closedA study of 1,037,936 US children seen in 17 healthcare systems across the country shows that COVID-19 vaccines are moderately protective against long COVID: 35% to 45%, with higher rates in adolescents. The study was published today in Pediatrics.
The researchers estimated vaccine effectiveness (VE) against long COVID in children aged 5 to 17 years. Though severe COVID-19 cases are less common in children than in adults, persistent symptoms in children do occur.
“It is difficult to establish how much this results from differential reporting of symptoms at different ages, greater difficulty distinguishing long COVID from other childhood illnesses or effects of the pandemic (eg, disruption of seasonal viral patterns, or of school progress,” the authors wrote.
Comments closed
