Coronavirus spreads. But don't panic! (topical thread)

[Dom]

Coronavirus: Impact of new variant on children investigated - BBC News

Scientists are urgently investigating hints the new variant of coronavirus spreads more easily in children.
If proven, this could account for "a significant proportion" of the increase in transmission, they say.
The claim comes from members of the government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats advisory group (Nervtag).

A recent study of infections in schools in England found that levels of the virus in school-age children reflected levels in the local community, suggesting that closing schools would only have a temporary effect.

Prof Wendy Barclay, from Nervtag and Imperial College London, said the mutations to the virus appeared to be making it easier to walk through the doorways that were there.


She said this could be putting children on a "more level playing field" with adults as the virus was "less inhibited" in children.



Prof Barclay said: "Therefore children are equally susceptible, perhaps, to this virus as adults, and therefore given their mixing patterns, you would expect to see more children being infected."



Work to understand the new variant is taking place at lightning speed and there is still much uncertainty.


It is now thought the new variant spreads 50% to 70% faster than other forms of the virus.

Early analysis of how and where it is spreading have also given "hints that it has a higher propensity to infect children", according to Prof Neil Ferguson from the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, who also sits on Nervtag.

He stressed the link was still being investigated and was not yet proven.

The R number - the average number of people each infected person passes the virus onto - for this variant during the tight restrictions has been estimated at 1.2, which meant cases were increasing.

At the same time the R number was 0.8 for the other forms of the virus during lockdown and they were in decline.

I've seen reports on this elsewhere and also being reported is that this variant is no more lethal than its progenitors. If it's true that this variant is spreading more quickly among children, under 16s will now simply develop resistance sooner rather than later.

-Teresa

Nothing is really determined yet - they have just started to notice it. They just started to study it. Probably we'll know more in a month, but so far it doesn't seem to increase death. Although I read somewhere that deaths from this one are more under 50. However, all of this is speculation until we have gathered data for a while.