Covid-19 escapes detection in children unless extensive testing is done

A child, wearing a mask, following the COVID-19 outbreak, New York, US, August 26 2020. Picture: REUTERS/CARLO ALLEGRI.

The Asian country used mass testing of suspected Covid-19 cases, patient isolation and contact tracing to control the pandemic virus. Still, about 70% of children at risk of infection had symptoms that didn’t get picked up, researchers said on Friday in the journal Jama Pediatrics. In fact, 93% of paediatric cases would have been missed if doctors had focused on testing symptomatic patients alone, they said.

“A surveillance strategy that tests only symptomatic children will fail to identify children who are silently shedding virus while moving about their community and schools,” Roberta DeBiasi and Meghan Delaney at Washington’s Children’s National Hospital, wrote in an accompanying editorial. In regions where face masks aren’t widely accepted or used by the general public, asymptomatic carriers may serve as an “important reservoir” that allows the virus to spread, they said.

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