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Implications of a highly transmissible variant of SARS-CoV-2 for children
  1. Oliver Ratmann1,
  2. Samir Bhatt1,2,
  3. Seth Flaxman1
  1. 1Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, London, UK
  2. 2Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
  1. Correspondence to Dr Oliver Ratmann, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK; oliver.ratmann{at}imperial.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2021-321903

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    Viner and colleagues1 reviewed data on SARS-CoV-2 transmission involving school-age children, found no evidence that children are more likely to transmit SARS-CoV-2 than adults and suggested that children are likely the safer population group among which social distancing measures could be relaxed. We reconstructed the age groups that sustain resurgent COVID-19 in the USA by combining mobility data of >10 million individuals, age-specific COVID-19 attributable death data and school case data, and came to consistent conclusions.2 In autumn 2020, after in-person schooling or hybrid models resumed in most US school districts,3 our analyses indicate the reproduction number (R) from children and teens was well below 1 at the population level, and that children aged 0–9 years contributed less …

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors OR conceptualised the study, performed the analyses, drafted the initial manuscript, and reviewed and revised the manuscript. SB and SF contributed to analyses, and reviewed and revised the manuscript.

    • Funding SF is supported by the Imperial College COVID-19 Research Fund and EPSRC (EP/V002910/1).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.