Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day one forty
Speaker 1: seven since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story, parents, teachers,
Speaker 1: and school boards are facing urgent and difficult decisions about
Speaker 1: whether and how to send kids back to school. Part
Speaker 1: of why that's so hard is that we still don't
Speaker 1: know enough about what this virus does to children and
Speaker 1: those around them. But first, here's what happened in virus
Speaker 1: news today. The sped up timeline to make a vaccine
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it won't be safe. That's according to Anthony Faucci,
Speaker 1: the US government's top infectious disease expert, who spoke to
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Television today. We pay particular attention to safety, and
Speaker 1: the repidity with which we are moving relates more to technical,
Speaker 1: logical advances and how you can make a vaccine even
Speaker 1: before you start testing it. That makes me confident that
Speaker 1: we are going to do everything we can to determine safety.
Speaker 1: Faucci has said the government strategy is to fund several
Speaker 1: vaccine projects in the hopes one or more will be effective.
Speaker 1: That creates a financial risk, he says, but not a
Speaker 1: health one. The Chicago Public School System, the third largest
Speaker 1: in the US, backed away from a plan for part
Speaker 1: time in person attendance blended with remote learning and will
Speaker 1: conduct all classes online. The district will assess if it's
Speaker 1: safe to open to hybrid learning in November. The decision
Speaker 1: comes as case numbers rise in the city and is
Speaker 1: based on public health data and survey results from a
Speaker 1: large portion of parents who are not yet comfortable sending
Speaker 1: their children to school, according to a statement from the city. Finally,
Speaker 1: some new data suggests that transfusions of blood rich with
Speaker 1: antibodies from recovered COVID nineteen patients can reduce the death
Speaker 1: rate in hospitalized patients by half. That's according to a
Speaker 1: report in The Wall Street Journal that cited data from
Speaker 1: researchers at a Mayo clinic webinar. The data was submitted
Speaker 1: to the US Food and Drug Administration, but hasn't been
Speaker 1: published in a journal or subject to peer review. And
Speaker 1: now for today's main story. Earlier this year, school gates
Speaker 1: around the world slammed shut. By early April, some one
Speaker 1: point five billion young people were staying home somewhere in
Speaker 1: the world as part of a broader lockdown to counter
Speaker 1: the novel coronavirus. The drastic measure worked in many places.
Speaker 1: Now as fall approaches, attention is turning back to a
Speaker 1: pillar of a pandemic resilient society schools. The role of
Speaker 1: children in driving transmission of the coronavirus isn't clear, and
Speaker 1: what we know about past respiratory infections isn't a lot
Speaker 1: of help. Bud As Bloomberg Senior editor Jason Gale finds
Speaker 1: out some clearer trends are emerging. Back in January and
Speaker 1: the first month of the pandemic, I wrote a story
Speaker 1: based on a study in the lands at Medical General.
Speaker 1: It was about six members of a family from the
Speaker 1: southern Chinese city of Shenzen who had spent the new
Speaker 1: year with relatives and wohan. Most of them caught the
Speaker 1: coronavirus while they were visiting the city and became sick
Speaker 1: with COVID nineteen, the disease it causes. After they got home.
Speaker 1: When they were getting tested, the parents of a ten
Speaker 1: year old boy insisted that he also have a CT
Speaker 1: scan of his chest, even though he had no apparent symptoms.
Speaker 1: His doctors caved and did the scan. Unexpectedly, they found
Speaker 1: the child did have pneumonia and A follow up swab
Speaker 1: confirmed he was infected with a newly identified sas Kovy
Speaker 1: two virus. The authors of the lance of paper said
Speaker 1: the child was shedding virus without symptoms, and such cryptic
Speaker 1: cases of walking pneumonia might serve as a possible source
Speaker 1: to propagate the outbreak. Six months later, the role of
Speaker 1: children in the pandemic continues to baffle. I asked Dr
Speaker 1: Thomas File, President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America,
Speaker 1: what he makes of the evidence about kids in the coronavirus. Now,
Speaker 1: that's a big issue of Jason, particularly right now here
Speaker 1: because everybody's thinking of reopening schools. Thomas is terror of
Speaker 1: the Infectious Disease Division at Sumer Health Hospital System in Akron, Ohio.
Speaker 1: He's had quite a bit of experience with kids and
Speaker 1: respiratory infections, but none of that has been especially useful
Speaker 1: with this virus. It's much different than all other respiratory
Speaker 1: infections because I can tell you I have a five
Speaker 1: and an eight year old grand children and I interact
Speaker 1: with a lot, and I can tell you every time
Speaker 1: they get a cold, my wife and I get a cold, Okay,
Speaker 1: they spread it to us, and we know very well.
Speaker 1: That if you look at another significant restaurant infection, influenza,
Speaker 1: children are a big source of transmission within the community.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you can control influenza and children, you're
Speaker 1: going to really control it in the adults as well.
Speaker 1: But this is not that case. This is so different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: children are typically super spread as of respiratory germs, and
Speaker 1: that makes it puzzling that kids don't seem to be
Speaker 1: major transmitters of Sanskovi two. Children are relatively absent among
Speaker 1: hospitalized patients as well. Initially, it was thought that it
Speaker 1: was because they're less likely to become seriously ill once infected.
Speaker 1: Later studies indicate that those of primary school age at
Speaker 1: least may be less likely to catch the virus in
Speaker 1: the first place. There are studies to suggest list and
Speaker 1: apply their children dependent in particularly young children number one,
Speaker 1: are less susceptible to serious infection, but more importantly transmittal less.
Speaker 1: Last Friday, the CDC published an account of a large
Speaker 1: outbreak of COVID nineteen at a summer camp in Georgia.
Speaker 1: There were almost six hundred campers, staff and trainees at
Speaker 1: the event, which started on June seventeen. It wrapped up
Speaker 1: earlier week later, after a teenage staff member developed chills
Speaker 1: and tested positive for sask V two. All up two
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty people or were infected. Some fifty six
Speaker 1: percent of staff caught the virus, as did just over
Speaker 1: half the campus age six to ten. In fact, the
Speaker 1: virus need to spread more among these younger kids than
Speaker 1: older children and adults. It's estimated that people younger than
Speaker 1: eighteen make up somewhere between two and five percent of
Speaker 1: all laboratory confirmed COVID nineteen cases, and that's well below
Speaker 1: that age group's share of the global population, which hovers
Speaker 1: around the propensity of children to transmit SiZ CoV two
Speaker 1: to other people is anything but clear. This is a
Speaker 1: really big area of unknown in terms of the science.
Speaker 1: This is Dr Caitlin Rivers. She's an epidemiologist at the
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, Maryland. We
Speaker 1: know that children are capable of spreading, particularly children who
Speaker 1: developed symptoms, but thankfully children are at lower risk of
Speaker 1: severe illness than adults, and so many of them have
Speaker 1: asymptomatic infections, they don't have any symptoms at all. And
Speaker 1: what we don't know is whether those children are likely
Speaker 1: to transmit and how often that happens. Compared to adults,
Speaker 1: Children with COVID nineteen typically have milder symptoms that are
Speaker 1: mostly limited to the nose and throat and upper airway,
Speaker 1: and they rarely require hospitalization. Understanding the prevalence of asymptomatic
Speaker 1: infection is harder because you don't know where these cases
Speaker 1: are unless people happen to get tested. Finding people who
Speaker 1: are infected but have no symptoms sometimes happens as part
Speaker 1: of efforts to trace and test those who have been
Speaker 1: in prolonged or close contact with the COVID nineteen case,
Speaker 1: and that makes it very difficult also to follow them
Speaker 1: and to see do they spread, to whom do they spread?
Speaker 1: And so that's why there's a lot of unknowns right
Speaker 1: now about children, and that's where the research is really
Speaker 1: trying to learn more. Although some research points to younger
Speaker 1: children being less likely to spread sask Covey, too, certain
Speaker 1: things about them makes them potential virus vectors. There are
Speaker 1: a few common behaviorows and children that you make them
Speaker 1: more likely to spread infectious disease. The first is they're
Speaker 1: not as good at personal hygiene and they're not really
Speaker 1: able particularly the younger children to observe things like physical
Speaker 1: distancing and mask us. I think we're learning actually that
Speaker 1: children are capable of a lot more of that than
Speaker 1: we ever thought, because we see kids all the time
Speaker 1: observing those behaviors in this current pandemic. But on average,
Speaker 1: I think they're less compliant than adults, and they also,
Speaker 1: particularly for kids who are in child care or who
Speaker 1: go to school, have a lot more contacts than adults.
Speaker 1: What about all the children in terms of the behavior patterns,
Speaker 1: I think older children are obviously more able to comply
Speaker 1: with physical distancing, hand hygiene mask use, and so from
Speaker 1: that perspective it would be safer to be around older children.
Speaker 1: We don't see any really strong differences in disease severity
Speaker 1: between very young children and very old children, so that
Speaker 1: doesn't weigh in too heavily. But we do see that
Speaker 1: infants under the age of one are at higher risk
Speaker 1: of severe illness than the one plus to eat tier range.
Speaker 1: Scientists in London found that clinical symptoms manifesting only of
Speaker 1: infections in tens and nineteen year olds, rising to six
Speaker 1: in people older than seventy. A handful of fatal pediatric
Speaker 1: cases has been reported, mostly in kids who are already
Speaker 1: very sick with cancer or some other life threatening condition. Also,
Speaker 1: a dangerous inflammatory syndrome has been associated with kids, but
Speaker 1: it's very rare. There are several theories why younger people
Speaker 1: in general may be less susceptible to COVID nineteen. Some
Speaker 1: scientists have positive that the disease might be sparing children
Speaker 1: because they're less exposed to the virus. With school closures
Speaker 1: and distancing measures largely isolating them, it's possible children mount
Speaker 1: a more robust initial immune response to the virus, giving
Speaker 1: the body a better shot at fending it off and
Speaker 1: avoiding some complications adults get. It's also being suggested did
Speaker 1: that the receptive the virus uses to invade human cells
Speaker 1: is less mature in children, making it harder for it
Speaker 1: to cause an infection. There's also the fact that younger
Speaker 1: people are less likely to have hypertension, type two diabetes,
Speaker 1: and other chronic conditions known to increase the severity of
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen. Caitlin Rivers says that although children are generally
Speaker 1: at low risk of severe illness, it's not just children
Speaker 1: in schools who need to be considered in deciding when
Speaker 1: and how to bring kids safely back to the classroom.
Speaker 1: It's also adults and this is their workplace, and so
Speaker 1: we need to consider their health and safety as well
Speaker 1: in this in this decision making process and acknowledge that
Speaker 1: they are the ones who are really at higher risk
Speaker 1: considering illness and thinking through this problem. Caitlin says the
Speaker 1: level of coronavirus circulating in the community also needs to
Speaker 1: be taken into consideration, because it will be much harder
Speaker 1: to reopen schools when the community is experiencing a high
Speaker 1: burden of disease, and communities needs to weigh the consequences
Speaker 1: of not opening schools too. There are cars us if
Speaker 1: you will, associated with online learning as well, and that
Speaker 1: not all communities are, not all groups of children, not
Speaker 1: all age groups will be well suited to online learning,
Speaker 1: and so it's really about balancing those competing risks and
Speaker 1: benefits and challenges. I think for communities that do choose
Speaker 1: to reintroduce in person learning, making the classroom safer looks
Speaker 1: a lot like introducing the interventions that we've all become
Speaker 1: a coustom to observing in our everyday lives. That means
Speaker 1: physical distancing, which in this case means keeping kids apart
Speaker 1: mascuse for everyone, not just teachers, but also the kids.
Speaker 1: Improving ventilation to try to get some fresh air in
Speaker 1: and providing as many opportunities as possible for hand hygiene,
Speaker 1: and that can include both open water or alcohol based
Speaker 1: and sanitizer. And it's really the suite of interventions taken
Speaker 1: together that will reduce the risk of transmission in the classroom.
Speaker 1: When it comes to questions about the coronavirus children and classrooms,
Speaker 1: there are no easy answers, but information based on science
Speaker 1: and public health can at least inform bit of choices
Speaker 1: for the healthen well being everyone. That was Jason Gale,
Speaker 1: and that's it for our show today. For coverage of
Speaker 1: the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world,
Speaker 1: visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like
Speaker 1: the show, please leave us a review and a rating
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to
Speaker 1: help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily
Speaker 1: edition is produced by Topher foreheads Jordan Gospore, Magnus Henrickson
Speaker 1: and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by
Speaker 1: Jason Gale. Original music by Leo sedri Our. Editors are
Speaker 1: Francesco Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head
Speaker 1: of podcasts. Thanks for listening.