Since the start of the pandemic, a wealth of research studies have been conducted to gain a further understanding of the health implications associated with it.
In a new study, released in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers at the University College London found that children less than 14 years old are significantly less likely to be infected with COVID-19.
The study involved more than 40,000 children under the age of 14 and over 250,000 young people under the age of 20.
From their analysis of nearly 14,000 studies derived from MedRxiv and PubMed, the findings showed that children are up to 44 percent less likely to be infected with the coronavirus in comparison with adults.
“PubMed and medRxiv were searched from database inception to July 28, 2020, and a total of 13 926 studies were identified, with additional studies identified through hand searching of cited references and professional contacts,” the co-authors wrote in their journal article.
“In this meta-analysis, there is preliminary evidence that children and adolescents have lower susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2, with an odds ratio of 0.56 for being an infected contact compared with adults,” the co-authors concluded.
“This new data provides further essential evidence to governments around the world to inform their decision-making on keeping schools open during the pandemic.”
The study was conducted by Russell Viner, Oliver Mytton, and Chris Bonell, among others.
