They should pass through the cracks of containment.
In all likelihood, schools will remain open in France, despite the announcement of confinement.
Pending final arbitration, the scientific debate rages on: children, sometimes described as small "contaminators", are at the origin of a resumption of the epidemic in Israel, according to a recent government study.
In question, their return to the school benches.
A given has been a consensus since the start of the health crisis: children mostly suffer from mild forms of the virus.
"In children, the infection is generally milder or asymptomatic, which means that the infection can go unnoticed or go undiagnosed", recalled a study published in mid-August, by the European Center for the prevention and control of diseases (ECDC) on SARS-CoV-2 infection in children and the role of the school environment in virus transmission.
However, do they transmit Covid-19 a lot?
The answer is, there, far from being unanimous in the scientific body, which has been shrinking for months on this question.
"Superpropagators", according to the results of a study published in September in the journal Science on India, children are in reality "small contaminators", as stated in our columns at the beginning of June, Robert Cohen, vice-president president of the French Pediatric Society.
5% of children "super-contaminators" in Israel
In an attempt to see more clearly, the Israeli government, faced with a second wave in mid-September, took an interest in the consequences of the reopening of schools after confinement.
An important point of methodology according to epidemiologists.
"Most of the studies on Covid-19 and children have been carried out during periods of lockdown - which are not normal conditions - or at a time of low community transmission (outside of active clusters,
Editor's note
)", writes Zoë Hyde.
This Australian scientist synthesized the results of this Israeli study published on October 21.
To demonstrate the contagiousness of children in the country, 350 people who have infected at least ten people have been identified by the authorities.
Among these "super-contaminators", 5% were children, we learn.
(1/7) Report by Ministry of Health, Israel, showing children more likely to be infected than adults, are mostly asymptomatic, can be superspreaders, that school clusters spread into the community, and that school reopening accelerated the epidemic there.https: //t.co/ViCFXH4Xyd pic.twitter.com/llUk7x6qFa
- Dr Zoë Hyde (@DrZoeHyde) October 27, 2020
Above all, the clusters identified at the school have spread widely beyond its walls.
From an establishment where five teachers and 20 students were infected, 79 people are ultimately positive.
Conclusion of the Israeli government: the reopening of schools is indeed responsible for a resumption of the epidemic.
"The Israeli experience has shown us that it was impossible to put a watertight partition between the young and the old," analyzes Professor Philippe Froguel, doctor and researcher in Lille.
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Reinforced health measures
Could this work finally lead to a consensus on the issue of children's contagiousness?
"I think so," replied Antoine Flahault, not really surprised by the results: "I do not know a single respiratory virus which does not spread predominantly in children," notes the epidemiologist and public health specialist.
For the time being, in France, doctors are not yet speaking in unison.
If for some like Alain Fischer, pediatrician at Necker hospital in Paris, "the risk of transmission from children to adults is low, even if it is not zero," he repeated this Wednesday Franceinfo, for the Côté de la Science collective, which brings together several doctors, "schools are indeed not magically protected from virus or disease".
“The people who work there or the children who find themselves there are exposed like others to the risk of transmission.
It is not because children have very few severe forms or chronic forms, that they do not, or that they are not vectors of Covid: 40% of them, when they are detected positive, are asymptomatic ”, write these doctors.
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Should we keep the schools closed?
No, if and only if health measures are reinforced, insist those in charge of the educational world.
Scientists, like Antoine Flahault for example, advocate wearing a mask from six years old.