Speaker 1: It's Monday, March sixteen. I'm Oscar Emeras from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily
Speaker 1: coronavirus update. We know that older people are most at risk.
Speaker 1: We're getting severe symptoms from coronavirus, but why aren't children
Speaker 1: getting that sick. Studies have shown that children can contract
Speaker 1: the virus at the same rates as adults, but the
Speaker 1: symptoms are not as bad. It all could come down
Speaker 1: to a person's underlying health conditions. While the immune system
Speaker 1: is fighting the virus, it could also be exacerbating these
Speaker 1: underlying health factors. Megan Ulteney, staff writer at Wired, joins
Speaker 1: us for why COVID nineteen isn't affecting kids the same
Speaker 1: way as others. Thanks for joining us, Megan, Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. We're still trying to learn more about COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: the coronavirus, and how people get affected by it. Right now,
Speaker 1: a single contagious person can affect about two point two others.
Speaker 1: On average. Globally, three point four percent of reported COVID
Speaker 1: patients have died. These numbers are all subject to change
Speaker 1: as we get more infections and we get to drill
Speaker 1: down a little bit more on what's happening. But one
Speaker 1: of the big questions that has been because we've seen
Speaker 1: the debts, and we've seen the severe cases, mostly in
Speaker 1: older adults, mostly having underlying health conditions. But the big
Speaker 1: question is where have all the kids gone? Like, what's
Speaker 1: happening to children that are being infected with the virus.
Speaker 1: Because usually when there's some type of respiratory disease something
Speaker 1: like that, it tends to affect young kids and older people.
Speaker 1: So we're trying to figure out exactly why there haven't
Speaker 1: been that many severe cases and children Megan. There's a
Speaker 1: few studies that have come out about this. Now what
Speaker 1: do we know? Yeah, so you know, there have been
Speaker 1: some recent analyzes um looking at cases coming out of
Speaker 1: China that have indicated that children under the age of
Speaker 1: ten account for less than one percent of all infections.
Speaker 1: According to the World Health Organization, their data shows that
Speaker 1: about two point four percent of reported cases in China
Speaker 1: were children under the age of ten, So those are
Speaker 1: still you know, if it's somewhere between one and two
Speaker 1: point four percent, it's still a pretty small case. And
Speaker 1: if we look at you know, cases of where children
Speaker 1: got critically ill, that's happening even less like point two
Speaker 1: percent of the time. China has yet to report any
Speaker 1: instances of a young child dying of the disease caused
Speaker 1: by this you know, new novel coronavirus. So for the
Speaker 1: last you know number of weeks, as UM you know,
Speaker 1: these cases have passed a hundred thousand globally, we're just
Speaker 1: seeing very few kids, um in the case numbers. The
Speaker 1: interesting thing is that children are not necessarily not being infected.
Speaker 1: They are being diagnosed with COVID nineteen. They're just not
Speaker 1: getting as sick as some older people. Yeah, So for
Speaker 1: the last few weeks there's kind of been this question of,
Speaker 1: you know, our kids not getting infected and that's why
Speaker 1: we're seeing the low case numbers, or do they just
Speaker 1: have much more mild response to the virus and so
Speaker 1: they're not showing up because they're not you know, presenting
Speaker 1: symptoms that would um, you know, allow them to get diagnosed.
Speaker 1: And so a new study came out um last week.
Speaker 1: It was published to a preprint server, and instead of
Speaker 1: just looking at case data, it actually looked at contact tracing.
Speaker 1: So this is the process by which health officials will
Speaker 1: go out and find people who have been exposed to
Speaker 1: patients of COVID nineteen and then track all of those
Speaker 1: people and monitor them and see if they get sick
Speaker 1: or not. And so that starts to build a more
Speaker 1: detailed picture of something called the attack rates, So how
Speaker 1: often the virus actually spreads into people of different age
Speaker 1: groups when they've kind of been exposed to the same
Speaker 1: number of infected people. And so looking at that data,
Speaker 1: which was actually collected by the Chinese c d C
Speaker 1: in Shenzen Province, which about seven hundred miles to the
Speaker 1: south of where the kind of epicenter of the outbreak
Speaker 1: was in Hube, they were able to identify about four
Speaker 1: hundred patients and about twelve people who've been in close contact.
Speaker 1: And when they looked at that data, what they found
Speaker 1: was that the virus basically appears to infect children at
Speaker 1: the same rates that they infect adults. So between seven
Speaker 1: and eight percent of the time that someone is exposed
Speaker 1: to an infected person, say themselves would get the disease,
Speaker 1: and that was true whether that person was in their
Speaker 1: sixties or that person was under the age of ten.
Speaker 1: This is the first time we're seeing data AMERGE that
Speaker 1: suggests that in fact can get the disease just as
Speaker 1: much as if anyone else can. It's just that they
Speaker 1: appear to have much milder symptoms than adults, and particularly
Speaker 1: people in the kind of elderly age coort. So then
Speaker 1: that leads us to believe underlying health conditions seemed to
Speaker 1: be a key factor in the severity of COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: When you know it starts going crazing their bodies, also
Speaker 1: their immune system the response. So the immune system seems
Speaker 1: to be a double edged sword because it's trying to
Speaker 1: fight the virus, but it's also fighting the body itself,
Speaker 1: damaging healthy tissues sometimes and other people are said, going
Speaker 1: back to the children, they don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: these underlying health conditions. Their lungs haven't been as going
Speaker 1: through years and years of inflammation, and these little things
Speaker 1: could be helping children have these milder symptoms. So at
Speaker 1: this point these are hypotheses because we don't have the
Speaker 1: kind of experimental data that we would need to prove
Speaker 1: these out. I'm sure those studies will be coming, but
Speaker 1: what you've talked about relies on some older research on
Speaker 1: a related coronavirus, the coronavirus that causes stars. There was
Speaker 1: an outbreak of that in two thousand two and two
Speaker 1: thousand three in China, and so scientists who over the
Speaker 1: last decade or so have been studying stars in the lab.
Speaker 1: What they have seen is that as mice get older
Speaker 1: and older, they have worse and worse symptoms and worse
Speaker 1: and worse outcomes um with stars. And because of the
Speaker 1: way that stars um, it has what's called kind of
Speaker 1: a biphasic pattern where you kind of have this big
Speaker 1: surge of symptoms right after infection when the virus is
Speaker 1: replicating heavily in the lungs, and so you get that fever,
Speaker 1: you get that cough, and then it dies down as
Speaker 1: the immune system kicks in. And then for patients who
Speaker 1: experience the worst symptoms, patients who often died, they kind
Speaker 1: of saw an uptick in symptoms that this time they
Speaker 1: researchers believe was not being caused by the virus itself,
Speaker 1: but by an immune system that had turned on and
Speaker 1: was kind of an overdrive and not able to turn
Speaker 1: itself off. And so their data from epidemiological studies of
Speaker 1: STARS patients as well as UM lab animals that have
Speaker 1: been infected with stars, has kind of built up this
Speaker 1: body of evidence that suggests that the immune response is
Speaker 1: as important in determining how severe someone's symptoms are with
Speaker 1: the stars coronaviruses as the virus itself, and so we
Speaker 1: have reason to believe that this new virus that causes
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen may um, you know, may provoke a similar
Speaker 1: a similar set of circumstances in patients. And so that's
Speaker 1: why we're seeing the higher mortality rates and higher set
Speaker 1: of severe symptoms and older patients. It's super important to
Speaker 1: understand why this is happening, why children aren't getting affected
Speaker 1: as seriously as some others, because when it comes down
Speaker 1: to public health officials being confronted with these choices, you know,
Speaker 1: we keep hearing a lot about social distancing and closing
Speaker 1: down concerts and all this other stuff, closing schools down.
Speaker 1: Even children are being infected at similar rates as normal adults,
Speaker 1: but they're not showing the symptoms. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: an interesting thing, you know, do you shut down more schools?
Speaker 1: Do you keep kids out of bigger areas just because
Speaker 1: they might have it but not be showing the same
Speaker 1: amount of symptoms as So it's important to understand what's
Speaker 1: going on here to some extent. It's still a little
Speaker 1: bit of an open in question just to what extent
Speaker 1: kids are involved in what's called onward transmission. So we
Speaker 1: don't really know right now the extent to which kids
Speaker 1: who are maybe experiencing mild symptoms are going out and
Speaker 1: spreading the virus further. You know, if they're not having
Speaker 1: a bad cough, then they may not be shedding large
Speaker 1: amounts of virus on other people. So that's a place
Speaker 1: where ongoing research is going to be required to understand
Speaker 1: just how much kids are playing a role in spreading
Speaker 1: this disease. Now that we know that kids can get
Speaker 1: infected with it at the same rates as adults, that
Speaker 1: would suggest that, you know, closing schools is perhaps a
Speaker 1: more relevant strategy than if kids weren't getting infected in
Speaker 1: the first place. But still don't understand exactly what some
Speaker 1: of the transmission dynamics are, and so I think the
Speaker 1: probably cautious approach would be to act as though they are,
Speaker 1: you know, vectors of diseases transmission. But like we said,
Speaker 1: that's not something we know for sure at this point.
Speaker 1: Megan Multeney, staff writer at Wired, Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for joining us. Yeah, thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1: This has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that.
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