“I was surprised by the high levels of virus we found in children of all ages, especially in the first two days of infection,”
Dr. Lael Yonker, a pediatric pulmonologist and lead author of the study, said in a statement.
“I was not expecting the viral load to be so high,” she continued. “You think of a hospital, and of all of the precautions taken to treat severely ill adults, but the viral loads of these hospitalized patients are significantly lower than a ‘healthy child’ who is walking around with a high SARS-CoV-2 viral load.”
The higher the viral load, the greater the transmissibility or risk of infection.
“Kids are not immune from this infection, and their symptoms don’t correlate with exposure and infection,” added
Dr. Alessio Fasano, a pediatric gastroenterologist and author. “During this COVID-19 pandemic, we have mainly screened symptomatic subjects, so we have reached the erroneous conclusion that the vast majority of people infected are adults. However, our results show that kids are not protected against this virus.”
It’s widely thought that kids are less likely to get the virus or become seriously ill from it because they have fewer immune receptors for SARS-CoV-2.
But the data showed kids can carry a higher level of the virus — and be more contagious — regardless of their receptor levels.
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/children-may-be-silent-carriers-of-covid-19?slot_pos=article_2&utm_source=Sailthru%20Email&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=daily&utm_content=2020-09-03&apid=25088831#Kids-carry-more-virus,-are-contagious