Are children one of the vectors of the fifth wave?

• In this fifth epidemic wave, the number of children testing positive is increasing sharply.

  As a result, the government has decided to toughen the anti-Covid-19 protocol in schools.

• A situation which made Professor Gilles Pialoux, head of the infectious diseases department at Tenon hospital in Paris, say that children "are the nucleus of viral circulation".

• If the incidence rate has dramatically increased among the youngest, in particular 6-10 year olds, 30-39 year olds are also affected by the resurgence of the epidemic.

A protocol that goes to level three. Between CP and CM2, schoolchildren must, from Thursday, wear the mask during recess. The mixing of pupils must also be limited to the canteen and during the practice of certain sports. Announcements made by Jean Castex on Monday evening, in reaction to the increase in Covid-19 cases. "The transmission of the virus, as we can see, has indeed greatly accelerated in children under 12," said the Prime Minister. This makes sense because these age categories cannot yet be vaccinated and are also much more screened, given the protocols applied in schools. "

A situation which made Professor Gilles Pialoux, head of the infectious diseases department at Tenon hospital in Paris, say that children "are the nucleus of viral circulation".

On Tuesday, it was Hans Kluge, the European director of the WHO, who noted that "the highest rates [of cases of Covid-19] in the age group of 5 to 14 years". 

looked at the available data to verify these claims.

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Data from Public Health France clearly show an acceleration in the incidence rate among the youngest: among 0-9 year olds, this rate fell from 55.6 cases per 100,000 at the beginning of November to 496.2 at the end of the month. If we look at primary school students (6-10 years old), the incidence rate is even higher and stood at 663 during the week of November 22-28. The department of Drôme even exceeded 2,000 cases per 100,000 toddlers last week. These incidence rates among younger people are the highest since the start of the pandemic, reports the Huffington Post.

However, those aged 30-39, some of whom are likely to be parents of young children, experience a significant incidence rate: it was 529.9 on November 29.

In 40-49 year olds, this rate is a little lower than that of children, at around 460 cases per 100,000.

Why are these numbers so important among the youngest?

“Children have always been a vector of the epidemic,”

 Michaël Rochoy, member of the Du Côté de la science collective

, reminds

.

The doctor regrets that level three was not applied from the start of September in elementary schools, in order to avoid mixing between levels in the canteen and indoor sport without a mask.

The risk of contamination is here "multifactorial", as Michaël Rochoy notes. Children under 12 are not vaccinated, as pointed out by Jean Castex, and they have never been so tested since the start of the year, reports the Drees (the directorate of the Ministry of Health responsible for statistical studies). Michaël Rochoy also deplores that the government was able to send "bad prevention messages" by stopping the wearing of masks at school in certain departments at the beginning of October.

In addition, it is the Delta variant which is now predominantly rife.

However, this variant is more contagious than the Alpha variant, which explains the increase in contaminations in children and their parents.

However, as the Drees notes, the number of positive tests is higher in the unvaccinated than in the vaccinated, with comparable population size.

Go back to class closures in the first instance?

How to limit this increase in contamination among children?

Michaël Rochoy pleads in particular for a return of class closures as soon as a schoolboy receives a positive test: “If a child is positive on Wednesday, he was already contagious on Monday and Tuesday.

He ate in the canteen, played sports without a mask.

On Thursday, almost no child in his class [who takes a PCR test] will be positive, ”he explains.

However, children may become positive later, on Friday or Saturday, due to the incubation time.

However, "we leave them in class," laments the doctor, who also spoke in favor of bringing the December school holidays forward by one week.

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