2023-10-24 21:21:23
MONTREAL — Children who attend daycare are unlikely to transmit Covid-19 to other children, caregivers or their parents, concludes a study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC Children’s Hospital. Pittsburgh.
It is therefore not necessary to subject symptomatic children to a screening test and even less to confine them at home, the authors believe. Both measures are currently recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study included 83 children who attended eleven daycare centers in two cities and the approximately 150 friends, parents and educators with whom they had contact.
During the duration of the study, from April 22, 2021 to March 31, 2023, the transmission rate of SARS-CoV-2 between daycare walls was only 2% or 3%, demonstrating that neither children nor educators did not spread the virus to other children or adults.
Only 17% of infections detected in homes might be attributed to a virus smuggled from daycare. This means that the vast majority of households infected with SARS-CoV-2 were infected from a source other than daycare.
In comparison, once a household member was infected with COVID-19, the transmission rate reached 50% for children and 67% for adults. These higher rates are likely attributable to closer and more prolonged contact, researchers say.
Researchers also found that only 5% of symptomatic children who attended daycare actually had SARS-CoV-2.
Vaccination of young children remains very important, the study authors say, if only to prevent adults in their household from having to miss work and other children from missing school days.
The findings of this study were published by the scientific journal JAMA Network Open.
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