Coronavirus outbreak: Why are children more susceptible to COVID-19

New Delhi, Apr 09: With several numbers of COVID-19 positive cases and fatalities are grabbing the headlines, it can be seen that most of the affected people turn out to be elder than younger.

While everyone is vulnerable to the deadly virus, people above 60 years of age and children are particularly seen susceptible to the coronavirus.

According to a study, that was published on March 31, 2020 by the Birth Defects Clinical Research Center of Sichuan Province and Southwest Medical University, describes the clinical features of the COVID-19 pandemic among children.

In the early stages of the outbreak, it was reported that COVID-19 would severely spread among adults over the age of 15 years, as the number of confirmed cases among children remained lesser.

Also, it is reportedly said that the researchers found it difficult to track the virus among children as they did not "clearly describe their health status or contact history".

To compare COVID-19 to other coronavirus outbreaks, during SARS in 2002-2003, the global number of children infected (between age groups of 4 months to 17 years) was less than 0.02 per cent of the total cases and number of deaths reported.

Also, during the MERS outbreak, out of over 1,600 cases, those children who were less than 19 years of age, accounted for less than 2.2 per cent of all cases.

Citing these data, researchers have claimed that 56 per cent of children demonstrated evidence of transmission through family gatherings and 43 per cent had a history of exposure to the epidemic site in China.

Also, the first infant that was diagnosed with coronavirus in China, was 17-days-old. It is also said that the newborn was confirmed to have been infected just 36 hours after the cesarean delivery.