Mystery coronavirus: children almost never catch it, scientists don’t know the reasons
KIEV. 6 Feb. UNN. New deadly coronavirus that has spread in China, almost never affects children, and scientists don’t know why. This is with reference to the research scientists, writes Business Insider, reports UNN.
For the first time on the outbreak was reported on 31 December, but none of the children under 15 years was not diagnosed as of January 22. The study, published in the Medical journal New England at the time, said that “children may be less susceptible to infection or when infected they may exhibit more mild symptoms” than adults.
Since then, doctors have recorded a few isolated cases among children have nine-month-old girl in Beijing, child in Germany, my father which was diagnosed with a coronavirus, and child in the Chinese Shenzhen, which has been infected, but do not show any symptoms.
On Wednesday, the Chinese authorities confirmed that a newborn child in Wuhan, the epicenter of mers was positive for the virus within 30 hours after birth; the child’s mother – a patient with a coronavirus.
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But mostly children don’t seem very vulnerable to virus.
“From what we’ve seen, and for some reason it seems that (coronavirus – redu) primarily affects adults,” said associate Professor of infectious diseases at the Yale school of medicine Richard Martinello.
According to him, some of the reports from China were from hospitals for adults, not pediatric hospitals, “so perhaps we do not see the data”.
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According to experts in healthcare, low level of morbidity among children – this is good news, because children are less likely to wash their hands, cover their mouth and refrain from touching to other people – a behavior that may facilitate the spread of germs.
“If we can protect children – first of all, it is good for them, and secondly, it is good for the population. If he gets in child population, it may intensify the outbreak,” said epidemiologist and Professor of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University Aaron Millstone.
During the current outbreak of coronavirus as indicated there are two explanations for why so few children got sick or they have a lower risk of infection, or there is something different in how their body responds to the virus.
Additionally, the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus have occurred in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of 2019. On February 6 in the world was 28 274 laboratory confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection, 565 lethal.