Rehabilitated, children? After being singled out as silent contaminators, a long-awaited study ( study conducted in Ile-de-France by 27 pediatricians from April 14 to May 12 on 605 children ) has just revealed its secrets. Professor Robert Cohen, pediatrician in Créteil (Val-de-Marne) and vice-president of the French Pediatric Society announces to us: the little ones - up to the age of 15 - are actually very contagious. It is adults who transmit the virus to them, not the other way around. The doctor makes a real plea to bring down the "inhuman" health rules in force in schools.
Are children the super-contaminators that we have described?
ROBERT COHEN . If there is one certainty, it is that it is not. We now know that they are very small contaminators. At the start of the crisis, it was believed - as with other respiratory viruses - that they played an important role in the spread of the epidemic. This is not the case. The evidence is accumulating.
Which ones?
Already, try to find clusters with children as a starting point. It's less than one in ten! Then, when you identify an infected person and test your loved ones, you realize that children are two to five less carriers of the virus than adults. Before the age of 15, you see nothing, or almost nothing. During this epidemic, we loved being scared. Today, we know that the population of children is less contaminating than that of adults. The risk is even extremely low. Our study shows it.
What is she saying ?
Serological tests show that 10% of children in Ile-de-France, the most affected region, have had coronavirus. 1.8% had a positive PCR test when detected during confinement. But looking at this last figure more closely, we were really surprised to see that only 0.6% was contagious. In addition, in nine out of ten cases, it is sick adults who contaminate children and not vice versa. Even when they have brothers and sisters.
So we shouldn't close the schools?
Yes, it was a necessity. A school is not only children but also adults who gravitate around them and can contaminate themselves. It was impossible to do otherwise. What I regret are the conditions for their reopening after May 11. We have soaped the board so that the students do not return to class. The sanitary protocol is inapplicable: put markings on the ground in the playground? Not to console a child by taking him in his arms? You realize, arriving at this level of inhumanity. Nor was there overflowing enthusiasm from the teachers. I do not think we will applaud them all at the end of this crisis.
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PODCAST. Closings, reopenings… The school facing the coronavirus, the story of a puzzle
Should we speed up the return to class?
Completely! The real problem is that they don't go. Today only 11% are welcomed into the classroom. We say no problem, there is only one month before the summer . But no, it's a month and two vacation behind, it's huge. Risks, there are a thousand: dropping out of school, especially among the most precarious, the lack of care for autistic or hyperactive people ... What a disaster. Not to mention, the loss of social ties or the overexposure to screens with kids who stay five hours in front of the computer. It is no coincidence that we see a considerable number of children arriving in our offices so anxious that they develop stomach or headaches.
And yet there have been children who died in the Covid…
It is dramatic but extremely rare. This year, we also have fifty children who died of bacterial meningitis and fifty others in the swimming pool. And nobody talks about that.
How to find a happy medium to protect them from the virus without isolating them?
There will not be zero cases in schools but let us be inspired by the Dutch. They first say to strengthen hand washing, and so much the better because it has always been catastrophic. Not all schoolchildren must be in the schoolyard at the same time, but children of the same class must play together again. The rules should be less strict than for adults since we know they are less contagious.
Can they be looked after again by their grandparents?
Yes, but under certain conditions such as not being too numerous in the living room and limiting hugs. Children are less dangerous to their grandparents than their parents themselves.
What are the hypotheses to explain it?
They appear to have fewer virus receptors on their nasal mucous membranes. Children could also be more protected because they have already caught other coronaviruses: this is cross-immunity. Another hypothesis: they always have a runny nose and are therefore more resistant to infections. It's like they've had training. This is why we are talking this time about trained immunity ... More anecdotal, we wonder if their small size is not an asset: we do not receive their postilions in the face.
PODCAST. What are coronaviruses? Diving under the microscope in virus biology