"The education and well-being of the current generation of children and young people should be the highest priority in any national strategy to reopen society."
Children have been spared the worst of disease from the pandemic, even considering the extremely rare post-COVID-19 hyperinflammatory syndrome
But school closures have been harming children, so the question regarding their role in transmission has loomed large
2/8
A new study from brings us a step closer to understanding
In a meta analysis of contact tracing studies, children acquire the infection less than adults. Looking at household transmission specifically, by less than half (OR 0.41, 95%CI 0.22 - 0.76)
Differences much stronger for young children (<12-14y) than older teens
This is supported by seroprevalence data which have generally found lower levels of infection in children (especially in the largest, population representative studies)
4/8
Assessing infectivity has been difficult, as has assessing direction of transmission in studies within schools
Thankfully, the vast majority of studies of COVID-19 within schools have found very limited evidence of transmission, with most cases remaining isolated
5/8
Importantly - the time has come to put polarisation and reductionism of the debate aside
Our children's futures are too precious for them to be used as a political football
Decisions on precise actions taken to make schooling happen need to consider a number of things
6/8
-Community transmission rates
-Resources available for infection prevention
-Social/cultural acceptability of different interventions
-Needs and viewpoints of the CHILDREN and their families whose futures may be irreparably damaged by long term school absence
7/8
It's not as simple as "Kids don't transmit", or, "Schools will propagate a second wave"
They can't be opened with impunity with high prevalence, or remained closed indefinitely
But children MUST be at the forefront of all national strategies to reopen society
8/8
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Here is a totally uncontroversial thread about immunity to common pathogens as influenced by the pandemic
I will simply state facts
1. Rates of many commonly circulating pathogens almost completely vanished during the first 1 - 2y of the pandemic (eg Group A Strep)
1/
2. The reason these pathogens almost vanished was because transmission was reduced by the measures which were introduced around the world to reduce transmission of #SARSCoV2
This coincidently also reduced transmission of other pathogens, often even more successfully
2/
3. Because these pathogens commonly circulate, there is usually a relatively stable amount of population immunity to them, acquired by infection
4. Vastly reduced rates of infection will therefore result in lower levels of population immunity than prior to the pandemic
3/