Child deaths from covid-19 remain remarkably low eight months into U.S. pandemic - The Washington Post

As the United States’ covid-19 death toll moves relentlessly beyond 200,000, data shows that only about 100 children and teenagers have died of the disease, a fatality rate that is drawing wonder from clinicians and increasing interest among researchers hoping to understand why.

The numbers are all the more remarkable because respiratory diseases typically hit the young and the old hard, and children are often highly vulnerable to infectious disease.

Less clear is the role younger people play in spreading the virus to others, even if they don’t become ill themselves — a critical issue as educators struggle to make decisions about reopening schools and child-care centers.

Nearly 80 percent of the deaths from the disease are among people 65 and older, one of the defining demographic characteristics of the U.S.

Now, though testing for people under 18 can still be difficult to find, eight months of data and experience have made researchers more confident in younger people’s ability to survive the disease.

This is true despite recent upticks in the infection and hospitalization rates for children and teenagers, and a decline in the median age of the infected population.

Some children and adolescents suffer the same terrible symptoms as their elders.

In an Aug. 7 review of 208 children and adolescents hospitalized with covid-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 69 (33.2 percent) required intensive care and 12 (5.8 percent) were put on ventilators.

“I don’t want people to get the impression that it’s completely benign in children,” said Sean O’Leary, vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious diseases and a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital Colorado.

Scientists also worry that younger people play an outsize role in spreading the virus, though major outbreaks among younger children in schools have yet to materialize.

Its website, which divides age categories differently, lists just 34 deaths among children 0 to 4 and 58 deaths among children and adolescents aged 5 to 17.

And deaths typically lag behind infections by two to three weeks, so any spike in covid-19 illnesses among younger people could be followed by a jump in fatalities.

The leading idea is that children have fewer ACE2 receptors on their cells than older people.

If that proves to be the key, perhaps scientists can find a way to block the virus from attaching there in vulnerable populations, which includes not just older people but those with underlying conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes.

A study sponsored by the CDC is tracking 800 children hospitalized at 35 sites around the country in an effort to determine why they were more vulnerable to the virus and why others seemed to better resist it.