WHO: Children seem to cope better with the corona virus

- We see relatively few cases among children and need to do more research to find out why children have better protection, says WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Johan Giesecke, professor emeritus at the Karolinska Institute and adviser to the WHO director general on infection prevention issues, says that the explanation is likely to be that children usually get a so-called asymptomatic infection. That is, the children are sick without being noticed. They thus do not get caught up in the statistics.

China's public health authority released a report on Monday reporting 45,000 diagnosed patients. Of these, only 400 children were under the age of ten and 550 were between the ages of 10 and 20. No child under ten has died and only one in the group 10-20 years. Thus, only about two percent of those infected are children.

The difference between the vulnerability of children and adults is recognized by other viral diseases.

"Children get a milder flu than adults, and for many viral diseases, such as hepatitis A, an asymptomatic infection is by far the most common in younger children," says Johan Giesecke.

In the two months that have passed since the world became aware of the new virus covid-19, close to 80,000 have been confirmed with infection and more than 2,600 have died.

Analyzes of the infected so far show that most, 80 percent, can get away with mild cold symptoms such as cough, sniffing and fever. But about 20 percent have had severe complications, including difficulty breathing, septic shock or kidney failure.

The mortality rate is two percent. The risk increases with age and if there are other serious illnesses in the picture.