Studies Find No Evidence Of Kids Under 10 Passing Coronavirus To Adults

A team of researchers working in partnership with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health conducted an exhaustive review of studies and found no evidence that young children have passed COVID-19 to adults. The team reviewed dozens of studies from around the world and could not find any cases where a child under the age of ten spread the virus to an adult.

"The role of children in transmission is unclear, but it seems likely they do not play a significant role. Changes in laboratory or radiographic parameters are slightly different to adults, and changes usually mild," the researchers wrote. "There is no direct evidence of vertical transmission, and early evidence suggests both infected mothers and infants are no more severely affected than other groups."

They also found that children are less likely to get infected than adults, and when they do, they are less likely to develop a severe infection.

While the researchers found no evidence that children have infected adults, they cautioned that not all of the studies they looked at were peer-reviewed and may have contained overlapping data from similar regions of the world. Another issue they found was the large number of asymptomatic cases, which makes tracing the spread of the virus very difficult.

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