Will Kids Spread COVID to Teachers?

doesn't mean it won't be safe. That's according to Anthony Faucci, the US government's top infectious disease expert, who spoke to Bloomberg Television today. We pay particular attention to safety, and the repidity with which we are moving relates more to technical, logical advances and how you can make a vaccine even before you start testing it. That makes me confident that we are going to do everything we can to determine safety.

Faucci has said the government strategy is to fund several vaccine projects in the hopes one or more will be effective. That creates a financial risk, he says, but not a health one. The Chicago Public School System, the third largest in the US, backed away from a plan for part time in person attendance blended with remote learning and will conduct all classes online. The district will assess if it's

safe to open to hybrid learning in November. The decision comes as case numbers rise in the city and is based on public health data and survey results from a large portion of parents who are not yet comfortable sending their children to school, according to a statement from the city. Finally, some new data suggests that transfusions of blood rich with antibodies from recovered COVID nineteen patients can reduce the death

rate in hospitalized patients by half. That's according to a report in The Wall Street Journal that cited data from researchers at a Mayo clinic webinar. The data was submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration, but hasn't been published in a journal or subject to peer review. And now for today's main story. Earlier this year, school gates

around the world slammed shut. By early April, some one point five billion young people were staying home somewhere in the world as part of a broader lockdown to counter the novel coronavirus. The drastic measure worked in many places. Now as fall approaches, attention is turning back to a pillar of a pandemic resilient society schools. The role of children in driving transmission of the coronavirus isn't clear, and what we know about past respiratory infections isn't a lot

of help. Bud As Bloomberg Senior editor Jason Gale finds out some clearer trends are emerging. Back in January and the first month of the pandemic, I wrote a story based on a study in the lands at Medical General. It was about six members of a family from the southern Chinese city of Shenzen who had spent the new year with relatives and wohan. Most of them caught the coronavirus while they were visiting the city and became sick with COVID nineteen, the disease it causes. After they got home.

When they were getting tested, the parents of a ten year old boy insisted that he also have a CT scan of his chest, even though he had no apparent symptoms. His doctors caved and did the scan. Unexpectedly, they found the child did have pneumonia and A follow up swab confirmed he was infected with a newly identified sas Kovy two virus. The authors of the lance of paper said the child was shedding virus without symptoms, and such cryptic cases of walking pneumonia might serve as a possible source

to propagate the outbreak. Six months later, the role of children in the pandemic continues to baffle. I asked Dr Thomas File, President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, what he makes of the evidence about kids in the coronavirus. Now, that's a big issue of Jason, particularly right now here because everybody's thinking of reopening schools. Thomas is terror of the Infectious Disease Division at Sumer Health Hospital System in Akron, Ohio.

He's had quite a bit of experience with kids and respiratory infections, but none of that has been especially useful with this virus. It's much different than all other respiratory infections because I can tell you I have a five and an eight year old grand children and I interact with a lot, and I can tell you every time they get a cold, my wife and I get a cold, Okay, they spread it to us, and we know very well.

That if you look at another significant restaurant infection, influenza, children are a big source of transmission within the community. I mean, if you can control influenza and children, you're going to really control it in the adults as well. But this is not that case. This is so different. Yeah, children are typically super spread as of respiratory germs, and that makes it puzzling that kids don't seem to be major transmitters of Sanskovi two. Children are relatively absent among

hospitalized patients as well. Initially, it was thought that it was because they're less likely to become seriously ill once infected. Later studies indicate that those of primary school age at least may be less likely to catch the virus in the first place. There are studies to suggest list and apply their children dependent in particularly young children number one, are less susceptible to serious infection, but more importantly transmittal less.

Last Friday, the CDC published an account of a large outbreak of COVID nineteen at a summer camp in Georgia. There were almost six hundred campers, staff and trainees at the event, which started on June seventeen. It wrapped up earlier week later, after a teenage staff member developed chills and tested positive for sask V two. All up two hundred and sixty people or were infected. Some fifty six percent of staff caught the virus, as did just over

half the campus age six to ten. In fact, the virus need to spread more among these younger kids than older children and adults. It's estimated that people younger than eighteen make up somewhere between two and five percent of all laboratory confirmed COVID nineteen cases, and that's well below that age group's share of the global population, which hovers around the propensity of children to transmit SiZ CoV two

to other people is anything but clear. This is a really big area of unknown in terms of the science. This is Dr Caitlin Rivers. She's an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, Maryland. We know that children are capable of spreading, particularly children who developed symptoms, but thankfully children are at lower risk of severe illness than adults, and so many of them have

asymptomatic infections, they don't have any symptoms at all. And what we don't know is whether those children are likely to transmit and how often that happens. Compared to adults, Children with COVID nineteen typically have milder symptoms that are mostly limited to the nose and throat and upper airway, and they rarely require hospitalization. Understanding the prevalence of asymptomatic infection is harder because you don't know where these cases

are unless people happen to get tested. Finding people who are infected but have no symptoms sometimes happens as part of efforts to trace and test those who have been in prolonged or close contact with the COVID nineteen case, and that makes it very difficult also to follow them and to see do they spread, to whom do they spread? And so that's why there's a lot of unknowns right now about children, and that's where the research is really

trying to learn more. Although some research points to younger children being less likely to spread sask Covey, too, certain things about them makes them potential virus vectors. There are a few common behaviorows and children that you make them more likely to spread infectious disease. The first is they're not as good at personal hygiene and they're not really able particularly the younger children to observe things like physical

distancing and mask us. I think we're learning actually that children are capable of a lot more of that than we ever thought, because we see kids all the time observing those behaviors in this current pandemic. But on average, I think they're less compliant than adults, and they also, particularly for kids who are in child care or who go to school, have a lot more contacts than adults.

What about all the children in terms of the behavior patterns, I think older children are obviously more able to comply with physical distancing, hand hygiene mask use, and so from that perspective it would be safer to be around older children. We don't see any really strong differences in disease severity between very young children and very old children, so that

doesn't weigh in too heavily. But we do see that infants under the age of one are at higher risk of severe illness than the one plus to eat tier range. Scientists in London found that clinical symptoms manifesting only of infections in tens and nineteen year olds, rising to six in people older than seventy. A handful of fatal pediatric cases has been reported, mostly in kids who are already

very sick with cancer or some other life threatening condition. Also, a dangerous inflammatory syndrome has been associated with kids, but it's very rare. There are several theories why younger people in general may be less susceptible to COVID nineteen. Some scientists have positive that the disease might be sparing children

because they're less exposed to the virus. With school closures and distancing measures largely isolating them, it's possible children mount a more robust initial immune response to the virus, giving the body a better shot at fending it off and avoiding some complications adults get. It's also being suggested did that the receptive the virus uses to invade human cells is less mature in children, making it harder for it

to cause an infection. There's also the fact that younger people are less likely to have hypertension, type two diabetes, and other chronic conditions known to increase the severity of COVID nineteen. Caitlin Rivers says that although children are generally at low risk of severe illness, it's not just children in schools who need to be considered in deciding when and how to bring kids safely back to the classroom.

It's also adults and this is their workplace, and so we need to consider their health and safety as well in this in this decision making process and acknowledge that they are the ones who are really at higher risk

considering illness and thinking through this problem. Caitlin says the level of coronavirus circulating in the community also needs to be taken into consideration, because it will be much harder to reopen schools when the community is experiencing a high burden of disease, and communities needs to weigh the consequences

of not opening schools too. There are cars us if you will, associated with online learning as well, and that not all communities are, not all groups of children, not all age groups will be well suited to online learning, and so it's really about balancing those competing risks and benefits and challenges. I think for communities that do choose to reintroduce in person learning, making the classroom safer looks a lot like introducing the interventions that we've all become

a coustom to observing in our everyday lives. That means physical distancing, which in this case means keeping kids apart mascuse for everyone, not just teachers, but also the kids. Improving ventilation to try to get some fresh air in and providing as many opportunities as possible for hand hygiene, and that can include both open water or alcohol based and sanitizer. And it's really the suite of interventions taken together that will reduce the risk of transmission in the classroom.

When it comes to questions about the coronavirus children and classrooms, there are no easy answers, but information based on science and public health can at least inform bit of choices for the healthen well being everyone. That was Jason Gale, and that's it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating

on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topher foreheads Jordan Gospore, Magnus Henrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Jason Gale. Original music by Leo sedri Our. Editors are Francesco Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.