'Kids don't spread it'

[WindFlower92]

Keep seeing this as a justification for schools opening. Anyone know if 14/15 year olds count as 'kids' in this context?

And is there any actual hard evidence for this statement anyway?

[LastTrainEast]

"It's all theatre" well that's a relief. I thought people were dying from it.

I'm a bit puzzled that somehow Boris is at fault for the lockdown. I was under the impression that other countries had lockdowns too, but I'm happy to hear that it was just something invented by one British Politician.

[mac12]

Secondary school in Auckland was centre of one of New Zealand’s clusters, 96 cases if I remember correctly

[OutwiththeOutCrowd]

On the topic of the role of older children in the spread of the virus, there is a retrospective study of the students and staff of a high school Covid-19 hotspot in France which does seem to show that it can take hold in such an environment.

Around 40% of the teachers and students tested positive for antibodies. Parents and siblings were also tested and a seropositive rate of around 10% was found.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.18.20071134v1.full.pdf

This is one school. It was in the epicentre of the outbreak in France. I am not sure how representative it would be for possible developments in UK schools but it is certainly worth taking note of.

Some medical professionals and epidemiologists have suggested that the virus could have been seeded in the UK by students returning from half-term skiing breaks.

[MarginalGain]

I think a lot of the language is misleading. I think "mild case" can mean the worst illness your child has ever had, bed bound for over a week and weeks before back to fitness. I wouldn't want that for my DC or any DC.

But that's not what is meant by 'mild case'. What you describe would be an outlier/severe case.

[beresh]

School children up to age 15 have been back in Switzerland since May 11th, in classes of up to 15 children. Not sure how it works for the kindergarten children but for my teenager there are no masks, 2m social distancing from teachers and plexiglass screens for close work with teachers. There are hand sanitisers outside all classrooms.

There have been no outbreaks in schools yet. The scientists here have argued very strongly all along that children are not major spreaders of this disease, they are less likely to catch it than older adults and are rarely ill if they do catch it.

The number of new infections has continued to fall, despite shops and restaurants also being open. The last 3 days there have only been 15 or fewer positive tests.

The UK only overtook Switzerland's infection rate per million people in the last couple of weeks, we were getting over 1000 new cases a day at the peak.

[Sweetnhappy1]

@Ontopofthesunset

There weren't huge outbreaks in schools prior to lockdown which you would have expected in London at least.

In my child's school, loads and loads of children went off sick after Feb half term (South West London) after they got back from their skiing holidays. Quite a few local schools had to shut for deep cleaning. We don't know if these were actual outbreaks because no-one was being tested. You could only access testing if you had returned from China, Iran or that very specific part of North Italy. So these kids who came back from skiing in France, Switzerland, Austria etc were just presumed to have normal viral infections. Most people I know who think they might have it had their symptoms after Feb half term up until the beginning of lock down. Bear in mind, infection to death usually takes a good few weeks.

[DelphiniumBlue]

I work in a primary school, and caught Covid from kids at school. I know this because I drive myself to and from school and didn't go anywhere else in the time leading up to it -we were already heading towards lockdown at the time and I didn't do my usual activities.
Everyone else in my household got it after me, so i didn't catch it from them.
Just saying.

[WindFlower92]

Which in my eyes makes them adults!

[WindFlower92]

Except for the graph that puts them in the 15-44 year old group.

[WindFlower92]

That's a great article about children, but no mention of 15 year olds

[Delatron]

Great to see more and more evidence on this very day.

[Barbie222]

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52770353?intlink_from_url=www.bbc.co.uk/news/education&link_location=live-reporting-story" rel="nofollow noindex" target="_blank">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52770353?intlink<a class="break-all" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52770353?intlink_from_url=www.bbc.co.uk/news/education&link_location=live-reporting-story" rel="nofollow noindex" target="blank">fromm<a class="break-all" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52770353?intlink_from_url=www.bbc.co.uk/news/education&link_location=live-reporting-story" rel="nofollow noindex" target="_blank">url=www.bbc.co.uk/news/education&link_location=live-reporting-story

Children "half as likely" to contract, not clear on role in spread.

[Velvian]

Sorry, that was a bit off topic. I listened to More or Less too. I took from it that children were initially feared to be superspreaders, but the evidence so far seemed to suggest that they spread it slightly less than adults do.

I did think that David Spiegalhalter slightly contradicted himself. He did a blanket "children only get mild illness" and then went on to acknowledge the few children in ICU and 1 fatality in the UK (data was only for over 5s).

[Velvian]

I don't think anyone should be vilified for putting their own family's risk at the forefront. We are obliged to keep our children safe as parents. I have avoided exposing my DC to norovirus and chicken pox when they were really small and would have taken up CP vaccinations if offered.

I think a lot of the language is misleading. I think "mild case" can mean the worst illness your child has ever had, bed bound for over a week and weeks before back to fitness. I wouldn't want that for my DC or any DC.

That's without taking the Multisystem Inflammatory syndrome into account. Yes, this does still seem to be very rare, but we know little about it and it does also seem to affect asymptomatic cases further down the line.

My Dsis developed encephalitis from an unidentified virus. That resulted in 2 months in hospital and a few years of learning to do everything again. I have lost that "it won't happen to us" mentality.

[Delatron]

Sorry OP I think the thread went off on a tangent.

I think the risk just goes up slightly with each age group but not much.

[Barbie222]

@Tfoot75 that's quite an old survey now and there have been a lot more data since.

[WindFlower92]

But does a 15 year old spread more than a 6 year old? I'm not asking about children under, say, 10.

[Barbie222]

That's very odd @RigaBalsam . It almost looks like it has been circulating in the population for a while to have those sorts of equal figures!

[Tfoot75]

adc.bmj.com/content/early/2020/05/05/archdischild-2020-319474

I think it is generally accepted now that children spread less than adults and are extremely low risk themselves. There is no evidence that they spread more, as with flu.

The further we get into this, the more mired in we seem to be. I think the consequences are going to be far far wider than what we're trying to cure here.

[Barbie222]

The point is that the infection was certainly around and in schools during the period when we were tracking and tracing, so I don't see that it would have suddenly stopped circulating just as we decided to stop testing.

Whether the children were infected at school is harder to say but the quick close and clean response is similar to what the Government propose to do now with the bubbles.

[RigaBalsam]

Coronavirus: Doctors, carers and children getting COVID-19 at same rate as everyone else - ONS news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-doctors-carers-and-children-getting-covid-19-at-same-rate-as-everyone-else-ons-11992078

Though no info on how children spread it. Very hard to investigate.

[namechangenumber2]

Ah yes our local school closed for deep clean as a child had a suspected case back in March. The Derby case was two children ( non siblings) who had it, so I guess the belief is they spread it between each other. I don't know really, I'm just guessing ( and being optimistic!)

[WindFlower92]

The reason I'm asking is because I'm a secondary teacher and will be back in a room with 10 14/15 year olds in two weeks. From WHO's statistics, 10-50 year olds are lumped together in one group, so that suggests infection and death rates are the same from the age of 10 up. Our school has said there is 'no need for PPE' as children infect less, but my concern is that I won't be dealing with children!

I've also tried to look online but can't find anything; what age do you develop ACE2 receptors? As surely that's the age you start to be able to infect others?

[Barbie222]

Just from the first page of my search there were schools closed after individual cases in Berks, Crewkerne, Wales, Dorking, Bolton, Medway and a Whitby during March.

[Barbie222]

There have been many examples @namechangenumber2 , they don't make much news. Three were closed and deep cleaned in my borough before the closures. I assumed it was happening in other boroughs too. A quick google shows these cases make the local paper but I haven't seen any total numbers.