Will Covid become a disease of the young? The world is watching England to find out | Devi Sridhar

The UK government has decided to let the virus spread among young people. Paediatricians are split over how much harm it will cause

Few issues seem to provoke such a range of opinions among experts as Covid-19 and children. When the WHO-China Joint Mission first reported on the virus in February 2020, one of the nuggets of good news was that children seemed to be relatively unaffected by it. This was surprising; like other acute respiratory infections, coronaviruses usually spread among and infect younger children. China’s strong suppression of the virus meant cases remained extremely low, preventing the virus spreading into other age groups. At the time, Covid appeared to be a disease of the elderly, the overweight and those with underlying health conditions.

One year into the pandemic, richer countries embarked on a mass vaccination programme to protect not only older age groups but entire adult populations. The success of vaccines in weakening the link between hospitalisations and deaths is clear (although the link is not completely broken). With vaccinated adults now largely protected from the severe consequences of Covid-19, the questions for children have changed. In the UK, there has been a surge of infections among children and adolescents. These will only increase when the school year starts again in the autumn.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Vd7N3E