Excerpted from article
Children and young people under 20 are half as susceptible to covid-19 and far less likely to experience clinical symptoms than older age groups, a study published in Nature Medicine shows.1
The results suggest that interventions targeting children, such as school closures, are therefore likely to have limited impact in controlling spreads of covid-19.
While there have been far fewer cases of covid-19 reported among children during the pandemic it has been unclear whether this is from lower susceptibility to infection or because children are more likely to be asymptomatic or only exhibit minor symptoms.
To gain a better understanding, researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine applied an age structured mathematical model to epidemic data from Canada, China, Italy, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea to determine the level of susceptibility and clinical symptoms in various age groups.