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Why Do So Few Children Die from COVID-19? We Don’t Know…
There are many aspects of COVID-19 that are poorly understood, but perhaps the most surprising is the data regarding children. Usually, the “vulnerable” populations for infectious disease are the young, the old, and the immunocompromised. In the case of coronavirus, the young have been almost entirely spared. It is wonderful that kids are protecting from this disease, but this raises an obvious question…. why?
A review by Jonas Ludvigsson published March 23 has offered some of the first insights into the subject. This paper looked at 45 articles and letters on COVID-19 that related to children, and summarized the findings. The author found that only 1–5% of confirmed COVID-19 cases were age 19 or below. Given that roughly one-third of the world’s population falls into this age group, this figure is incredibly low.
Not only do children rarely catch the disease, when they are infected the symptoms tend to be very mild compared to adults. A study cited in the review found that less than 1% of hospitalizations for COVID-19 in the US were children. An early document released by the WHO estimated that 2.5% of infections in children would rate as “severe”, and only 0.2% had died.
After providing a compelling case about how resistant children are, the paper provides some theories on why children are…
