#Coronavirus research updates: Exposed children escape infection more often than adults
►https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00502-w
26 May — Exposed children escape infection more often than adults
Children and adolescents under the age of 20 are much less likely than adults to become infected by the new coronavirus, finds a large systematic review of journal articles, preprints and reports.
Russell Viner at University College London and his colleagues screened more than 6,000 studies, of which 18 provided data that met the authors’ criteria for inclusion. The 18 included 7 that had been peer reviewed (R. M. Viner et al. Preprint at medRxiv ▻http://doi.org/dwp6; 2020).
Studies that traced the contacts of infected individuals show that children are 56% less likely to get infected than adults when in contact with an infected person. The analysis suggests that children have played a smaller part than adults in spreading the virus in the population, but the evidence for this finding is weak.
There has not been enough research to determine whether infected children are less likely than adults to pass on the infection, the authors conclude.
The study has not yet been peer reviewed.