Covid-19 and children: what do we know two years after the start of the pandemic?
Two years after the start of the epidemic, we now know that children are just as much at risk of contracting Covid-19 as adults.
AP - Laurent Cipriani
Text by: Simon Rozé Follow
4 min
A record incidence rate, the mess in schools, queues in front of pharmacies to be tested, three different health protocols in one week in France and these figures: 80 children under 10 are hospitalized in intensive care, two died within the last 24 hours.
Considered at the start of the pandemic as spared by Covid-19, children are however just as much the target of the disease as adults.
Advertising
Read more
During the first wave of Covid-19 in the spring of 2020, children were not at the center of concerns.
For lack of sufficient tests, and these are reserved for people at risk, they were only screened occasionally.
This has led to their role in the epidemic being downplayed.
Two years later, we now know that children are just as much at risk of contracting Covid-19 as adults.
However, on average, they will develop far fewer severe forms.
Unfortunately, the extreme contagiousness of the Omicron variant leads to an explosion of cases in children, and therefore an increase in the number of hospitalizations even for young people without comorbidities.
“
An interesting series in Germany on 1,680 hospitalizations of children shows that 78% of them had no comorbidity
,” explains Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Geneva.
►
To read also:
Covid-19: what impact of the Delta variant on children?
“
There are serious forms, there are extremely serious forms in children.
They are much rarer than in adults.
But because of the very large number of infected children, they end up being in absolute numbers at levels never seen for virtually any other disease in Europe.
“Especially since the consequences of an infection can be felt in the long term.
Children can also, like adults, suffer from long-term Covid.
There is also this condition which was mistaken for Kawasaki syndrome at the start of the pandemic: PIMS, pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndromes.
These PIMS require hospitalization but are fortunately very rare and well treated.
►
To read also:
Covid-19: Unicef facing its biggest challenge since its creation 75 years ago
How to protect them?
Pediatric vaccination is a very effective weapon to prevent these consequences.
It decreases the number of symptomatic forms and protects against long Covid and PIMS.
Unfortunately, in France, this vaccination only concerns very few children today.
Only 1% of them have been vaccinated, against 30% in Spain, while the two countries have started their campaign at the same time.
This only concerns those over 5 years old.
Clinical trials are still ongoing for the youngest.
To protect children without vaccination, all that remains is the barrier gestures and especially the ventilation of closed places as well as the renewal of the air in the classrooms.
But here too, we see that these measures have hardly been implemented in France.
►
Also to listen:
The vaccination of children in Bobigny, in Seine-Saint-Denis
Preventing the epidemic from circulating actively among children would however have a double interest. Their protection first of all, but this would also constitute a brake on the spread of the virus. Contrary to what we thought two years ago, the youngest in fact play a non-negligible role in the epidemic dynamic: “
Children are contaminated en masse in highly promiscuous school environments that are not very well ventilated, in schools. environments where they spend hours with few barrier gestures
, ”suggests Antoine Flahault. “
When they come home, then they infect their parents and sometimes their grandparents. We see today that they play a driving role in the epidemic, as in all respiratory viral infections.
".
Thus, for the flu for example, even if the majority of its victims are elderly people, half of the contaminations occur in those under 20 years of age.
►
To read also
:
schools in France, the rupture ... it's on the front page of the press review
►
To read also:
Covid-19: the vaccination of children, a subject that divides within the WHO
There is therefore a strong interest in protecting children as much as possible from infection and not letting the epidemic run in this age group, as we sometimes hear.
Unfortunately, we are very far today in France: the incidence rate is close to 2,000 cases per 100,000 children in kindergarten.
It is over 3,000 for older children and even approaches 5,000 for high school students.
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Coronavirus
Vaccines
Health and medicine
Society
our selection
France