As COVID-19 continues to spread across much of the nation, scientists are discussing a phenomenon involving children and their likelihood of spreading the virus based on findings from Iceland.
Science Museum Group's Science Director Roger Highfield spoke with the CEO of an Iceland-based genetics company, Kari Stefansson, about the fact that children seem unlikely to spread the coronavirus to their parents.
Stefansson is CEO of deCODE Genetics and the company is studying the spread of the virus with Iceland's Directorate of Health and the National University Hospital. In Iceland, testing there has revealed a great deal about the pandemic as the country has done an extensive job documenting the virus and containing the virus. However, Iceland is still hard at work to ensure that it is able to continue tracking contacts, testing and isolating and quarantining subjects who contract the virus. The country did not close elementary schools, stores or child care facilities, but did ban gatherings of more than 20 people.
Stefansson reports that children younger than age 10 are less likely to contract the coronavirus than adults. Even if they do contract it, they are also less likely to spread the virus to adults.
“Children under 10 are less likely to get infected than adults and if they get infected, they are less likely to get seriously ill,” Stefansson said in an interview with Highfield later posted to the Science Museum Group's website. “What is interesting is that even if children do get infected, they are less likely to transmit the disease to others than adults. We have not found a single instance of a child infecting parents.”
Stefansson reports that the coronavirus seems to mutate at a low rate although there is a great deal of diversity in sequences.
“We found 291 mutations in Iceland that have not been seen elsewhere,” Stefansson said in the interview. “However, there is no evidence of a different biology of the virus in A1 and A2 and so on.”
Additionally, findings showed men are more likely to become infected than women. Should women contract the virus, however, they are less likely to become as sick as men will.
While there is still plenty of time ahead in the fight against the coronavirus, Iceland has taken a relaxed approach, all things considered, with the exception of three areas, Stefansson said.
“We have screened more than anyone else to find the cases looming in society that have not been caught by the health care system; we have aggressively tracked people they have come into contact with; and we have equally aggressively put them in quarantine,” Stefansson said.
