Because they have mild symptoms, children are poorly tested and rarely present in epidemiological studies carried out on Covid-19. This explains the persistent uncertainties about their role in the spread of the coronavirus, which emerged in December in China. Last week, when several European countries announced the gradual lifting of containment, a German study raised doubts.
Read also: Covid-19: concerns for some children
Led by Dr Christian Drosten, the virologist who advises Angela Merkel, it suggests that children are no less contagious than adults, and therefore have the same capacity to transmit the virus. The researcher, famous for having launched early detection on a large scale in his country, has taken back the results of 3700 positive tests to Covid-19 carried out at the Institute of virology in Berlin. The objective was to compare, according to the age of the patients, their viral load, that is to say the amount of virus present in their respiratory tract. "Load
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