Only ONE healthy child has been killed by Covid-19 in Britain, reveals study

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Children made up just 1 per cent of all coronavirus cases during the first wave of the epidemic, a Government-run study suggests.

Researchers swabbed more than half a million people and found youngsters under the age of 16 accounted for only one in 100 cases of the virus in England.

The data included NHS and Public Health England (PHE) test results plus those carried out by GPs at 300 practices around the country. 

Public Health England – which led the study – said its findings provide more evidence of the ‘limited role of children in the pandemic’.

It comes as a major boost for Boris Johnson’s plans to reopen classrooms next month. Ministers have faced a battle against teaching unions who argue that it is too dangerous to return because of a lack of safeguards.  

It was previously thought that school-aged children might be ‘super-spreaders’ of Covid-19, as they are with other viral infections like flu.

But a growing body of evidence is now staring to show that youngsters appear to be less likely to catch or spread the disease than adults.

Scientists can’t pin down exactly why they seem to be more immune to Covid-19, but they believe that youngsters may have less receptors in their airways. 

Children made up just 1 per cent of all coronavirus cases during the first wave of the epidemic, a Government-run study suggests. Pictured: A socially-distanced class taking place in London

For the latest study, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), researchers swabbed 540,305 people for Covid-19 from February to May 3. 

A total of 129,704 people tested positive for the disease, around one in four (24 per cent).

Children accounted for 1,408 of those positive results, which is equal to 1 per cent of the total and 4 per cent of the 35,200 tests carried out on them. 

The highest number of positive cases in children were among children under the age of three months.

Lockdown restrictions likely killed more children than coronavirus itself 

Lockdown restrictions are likely to have killed more children than the virus itself, experts warn.

British paediatricians have identified nine children who died of cancer or sepsis by the end of April after coming too late to hospital to receive effective treatment.

That is higher than the total number of children who had died of Covid-19 across the UK by that point.

Even health bosses admit parents were probably late to bring their children to hospital because they were heeding the Government’s ‘Stay at Home’ message.

These worrying statistics – highlighted in an opinion piece by leading health officials, paediatricians and governmental advisors in the British Medical Journal – are merely the tip of the iceberg.

‘Children with critical illnesses were not accessing health services on time and, therefore, suffering potentially avoidable harm,’ they write.

Diabetes specialists also say they have seen delayed presentations among child patients.

Even child A&E admissions fell by half during lockdown as parents with badly injured children stayed away.

And the toll of lockdown is likely to rise for years to come, with many parents avoiding vital vaccination appointments for fear of exposing their children to the virus.

This raises ‘concerns of future outbreaks’ of measles, mumps and rubella in particular, the experts write.

School closures will also have impact on mental health and social skills for ‘many years after enforced isolation’, they write.

The six authors – who include SAGE members Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisations at Public Health England, and Professor Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health – point out that the risk to children from coronavirus itself has been minimal.

‘Children and young people … account for only 1 to 3 per cent of Covid-19 cases, with only 5 per cent of those tested developing severe or critical disease, and very few deaths reported worldwide,’ they write.

But researchers said that this was just a reflection of the higher number of tests done among children in this age bracket.

They said that young infants are more likely to have more tests done when they are unwell and parents are more inclined to take them to a doctor if they are younger.

During the study period there were eight deaths of children confirmed to have Covid-19.

But in half of those cases, the disease is not thought to have played a role in their death, according to the researchers.

Among four children aged 10 to 15 who died, three had ‘multiple’ other health conditions, they wrote. 

The authors, which included experts from PHE, the University of Oxford, the Evelina children’s hospital, King’s College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, concluded: ‘England is currently nearing the end of the first peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

‘Consistent with other countries, children account for a very small proportion of confirmed cases and have very low case-fatality rates. 

‘The experience in England adds to the growing body of evidence on the limited role of children in the Covid-19 pandemic, with just over 1 per cent of confirmed cases occurring in children.’ 

Previous research has implied that lower infection rates among children may be due a lower count of the enzyme ACE2 in their respiratory tract

ACE2 is a protein on the surface of cells to which Covid-19 hooks onto and uses to invade human cells.  

Lead author Dr Shamez Ladhani, from PHE, added: ‘It is still not clear why young children have such a low risk of infection compared to older children or adults. 

‘One theory is that, compared to adults, children have fewer ACE2 receptors which the virus can bind to in cells that line the respiratory tract.

‘The way the immune system reacts to the virus is also likely to be different in children compared to adults.

‘Whilst these numbers are reassuring for children, they include a long period of complete lockdown where children were less likely to have been exposed to the virus.’

He added: ‘We need to remain vigilant as the lockdown eases and children have increased contact with other children and adults in the coming weeks. 

‘In particular, we need more information about asymptomatic infections and silent transmission.’

Commenting on the study, professor Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said: ‘These data are high quality and very useful and confirm international evidence that children and young people as a group are little affected by this virus, even showing a slight reduction in total excess deaths.

‘Any death of a child is one too many, however even the extremely low Covid-related death rate is an overestimate as Covid-19 infection appeared incidental in half those who died.

‘Testing of symptomatic cases can be misleading about the chances of transmission, as children are much less likely to be symptomatic than adults, however these data provide another part of the jigsaw that together tells us that children play only a minor role in this pandemic.’

Dr Mike Tildesley from the University of Warwick, added: ‘These results provide further supporting evidence that the reopening of schools in September should represent an extremely low risk to any individual child, though it is important to recognise that, despite these low numbers, we would expect that children may play a role in the transmission process.

‘With this in mind, the vast majority of parents should feel reassured regarding the safety of their children when schools reopen, though given the likely role of infected children in transmission, parents and teachers with underlying health conditions may need to take precautions in order to minimise their own risk over the coming months.’

Professor Paul Hunter, an epidemiologist from the University of East Anglia, said the results were encouraging.

But he warned: ‘Whilst it is generally accepted that children even when infected are unlikely to become ill with COVID-19 and very unlikely to die, this is not evidence against the role of children in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. I do not think the authors of this study can use their data to draw such an apparently firm conclusion.’