LONDON: COVID-19 poses significantly less risk to children than it does to adults, studies in the UK have found.
Scientists at the universities of York, Liverpool and Bristol, as well as teams from University College London (UCL) and Imperial College London, said data compiled from the first 12 months of the pandemic across England suggest people under the age of 18 have just a one-in-50,000 chance of being admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) in hospital if they contract the disease.
The chances of children and teenagers dying from it is around two per million — among the 12 million children living in England, the country registered just 25 deaths during the period.
The only cohort in the study at risk from COVID-19, the studies found, are young people with serious underlying health conditions, though six of the 25 who died had none.
The findings, the most comprehensive study of the effects of COVID-19 on child and young adult mortality so far — and which are published in three papers — have been sent to the World Health Organization.
They may have some bearing on whether governments decide to immunize children against the disease as part of international vaccine efforts.
“I think from our data, and in my entirely personal opinion, it would be very reasonable to vaccinate a number of groups we’ve studied, who don’t have a particularly high risk of death, but we do know that their risk of having severe illness and coming to intensive care, while still low, is higher than the general population,” said Prof. Russell Viner, head of the UCL team.
He added that data from other countries with different timeframes, responses and variants, including imminent studies from the US and Israel, would be needed to add greater context to the findings.
Dr. Elizabeth Whittaker, from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and Imperial College, said she felt, based on the data, that more children would benefit from living active, sociable and healthy lifestyles to mitigate possible future underlying health issues such as obesity.
“Those benefits far outweigh any potential tiny risk of becoming severely unwell with COVID-19,” she said, adding that she does not feel the emergence of new variants since the studies were launched undermines the findings.
“Although this data covers up to February 2021, this hasn’t changed recently with the Delta variant,” she said. “We hope this data will be reassuring for children and young people and their families.”
