There is
recent news regarding hundreds of children getting infected with SARS-CoV-2 in Texas, but one must take into account that there are more than 12000 daycare centers that have remained open in that state. The new cases (307 children and 643 staff members) come from 668 childcare locations. These numbers are important to consider because this translates to less than one child and about one staff member per location where a case has been detected. More than 11000 centers have not reported a case. It therefore remains clear that children are not significantly contributing to the transmission of COVID-19. Adult-to-adult transmission is dominant which means schools can safely reopen as long as adults maintain social distancing and wear masks. It is true that data from the United States is lacking so it is reasonable to be skeptical as a lot of things are still unknown. However, there are countries around the world that have good and thus, reliable data. Iceland and Luxembourg are examples of countries that have tested a significant fraction of their population. Luxembourg has tested nearly 32 percent and Iceland has tested about 22 percent of their population. In both countries, the cases involving children are very small. For instance, only 4 percent of those tested positive in Luxembourg are aged 18 years old or younger.
Worth noting is what Iceland did during the height of its pandemic. Iceland kept its daycare and primary (or compulsory) schools open. And Iceland has not seen the infection rates we are currently seeing in the US.
And if the 20-30 percent testing rate still appears low and makes you doubt the fact that infection in children is very low, one can use the data from Vo, Italy where nearly everyone have been tested not just once but twice.
Obviously, one can still pose the question of whether children can serve as carriers. Well, here is the data from Netherlands indicating that children are not found to transmit the disease:
We can indeed cite news that can scare all of us with regard to opening schools this coming Fall but we must based our decisions on science, which means considering reliable data and examining these correctly.
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