Reopening of schools causes controversy in Sao Paulo 1:30
(CNN) - As coronavirus cases increase across the country, most parents wonder if it's safe to send their children back to school. But with most research and testing targeting adults, the answer is complicated.
President Donald Trump has increased pressure on officials to reopen schools, alleging that decisions to remain closed are motivated by politics. But while some parents are eager to return to some sort of normalcy, others fear that their children will be exposed to infections.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued measures to keep children safe when schools reopen, including the location of desks 1.8 meters away, ensuring that children wear face covers and close common areas such as dining rooms and playgrounds.
Here is what we know about the risks to children:
Children are not immune to the coronavirus
Children also test positive for coronavirus, there is no doubt about it. And while they don't get as sick as adults, they can still get seriously ill, experts say.
In Florida, four children under the age of 17 died of coronavirus complications. At the height of the pandemic, New York saw an increasing number of hospitalized children with worrisome coronavirus-related symptoms. Several of them died. And in Texas, about 1,335 people tested positive for child care facilities, about a third of them children.
“We should not be complacent and think that if a child gets coronavirus everything will be fine. Chances are everything is fine, but we just don't know. This is particularly true for children who have underlying conditions, such as obesity or lung disease, "said Elizabeth Cohen, CNN's senior medical correspondent.
But children are not the only concern when schools reopen. With nearly a third of teachers nationwide over the age of 50, they are more vulnerable to fatal infections. Asymptomatic transmission of the virus is a major concern, and teachers can transmit the disease to the most vulnerable people. A sudden increase in schools can translate into a larger rebound a few weeks later.
“As any parent knows, children are small vectors of disease. We don't know exactly how effective children are at transmitting the virus that causes covid-19, but it's a big concern, "said Cohen. “Also, although children don't get as sick from covid-19 as adults, they can get seriously ill. We should not be swayed by the thought that children are immune to covid-19. ”
Messiah Guyton, 4, puts on hand sanitizer before snacking on his snack in Aurora, Colorado.
Your symptoms may differ from adults
Children are known to have a complete set of different symptoms, adding to the uncertainty of a virus that has killed more than 133,000 people across the country. Variable symptoms make it especially difficult to identify.
In the United States and the United Kingdom, hospitalized children between the ages of 2 and 15 had a condition that doctors called multi-system inflammatory syndrome. The symptoms are similar to toxic shock syndrome and Kawasaki disease, which causes inflammation in the walls of the blood vessels. In rare cases, it can lead to fatal limitations in blood flow.
Many of the children who tested positive for covid-19 or had their antibodies, but did not necessarily have typical coronavirus symptoms such as respiratory distress. His symptoms included a high temperature along with a rash, swollen glands in the neck, hands, and feet, dry and chapped lips, and redness in both eyes.
Coronavirus causes a wide variety of symptoms in children, according to a study published in a journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
In that study, Dr. Rabia Agha and colleagues at Maimonides Children's General Hospital in Brooklyn studied 22 children with coronavirus. They found that most had no classic symptoms. Fifteen patients had fever and nine had respiratory symptoms. Two had seizures and two were completely asymptomatic.
A six-month-old baby diagnosed with Kawasaki disease also tested positive for coronavirus.
Child-centered research is limited
It has been approximately six months since the coronavirus began to devastate the world, and health officials learn as they go along. And while numerous tests have been done to learn more about the pathogen, not many have focused on pediatric cases.
"Covid-19 is so new that we don't have enough research for adults, let alone children," said Cohen. “We cannot definitively say that the risks of returning to school are minimal. There's still much to do".
Unlike influenza, which has always shown that schools and children are the primary transmission tools in communities, not much is known about the coronavirus, said Dr. Robert Redfield of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. of Diseases.
"We really have no evidence that children are driving the cycle of transmission of this," he said.
However, he added, the ability of this virus to cause major illness in children "is very, very, very limited."
The United States data is incomplete because the country has not tested enough children to determine how widespread the virus is, said Deborah Birx, a member of the White House coronavirus task force.
"If you look at all the tests we've done ... the portion that has been the lowest is under 10s," said Birx. "So we are implementing other ways to get test results from them and ... we are really trying to figure this out."
Researchers are working on a saliva test that will make it easier to evaluate children.
Most children under the age of 18 have no symptoms, he said. And until health officials receive more evidence targeting that age group, there is no evidence of how many children die as a result of covid-19.
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