A study carried out by French researchers on more than 600 children shows that children seem less infected and less contagious than adults.
This week, a study conducted in Ile-de-France by 27 pediatricians from April 14 to May 12, on 605 children, looked at silent contaminators, often singled out during this epidemic. Following a battery of serological tests to determine the level of antibodies in the blood, only 10% of the children (in the study) had contracted the coronavirus. 1.8% of the youngest children had a positive PCR test at the time of diagnosis during confinement. As for the truly contagious children, they represented only 0.6% of the cases. "We already knew it but not to that extent, they are, in reality, very small contaminators", says Robert Cohen, pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Créteil intercommunal hospital and vice-president of the French Pediatric Society.
A protocol that questions
Contrary to popular belief since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic, children do not appear to be vectors of the virus and even seem less contagious than adults, the study found. Figures that question the maintenance of the strict health protocol, on May 13, the French Pediatric Society had criticized certain precautions " unnecessary or even harmful "Introduced in schools, such as the ban on playing together or the maintenance of barrier gestures.
This Thursday, June 4, the Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, had indicated that these restrictions will soon be "relaxed", even if for the time being, the health protocol remains maintained in schools.
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by Suruthi SRIKUMAR