German expert interview

I put the Dutch article [url]https://nos.nl/artikel/2332269-duitse-virologen-kinderen-mogelijk-net-zo-besmettelijk-als-anderen.html[/url] 

with a "stupid warning" at the stupid remarks of a world-leading virologist advising a.o. the Dutch government claiming "if children have the virus but do not show symptoms they do not spread the virus".

google translate;

German Virologists: "Children May Be As Contagious As Others"

Children can be just as contagious as older age groups and can therefore spread the corona virus just as easily. This is the view of a German research group led by top virologist Christian Drosten in a new study. Drosten is an important adviser to the German government.

The researchers explicitly warn against full reopening of schools and nurseries. They emphasize the need to minimize the spread of the virus as a large proportion of the population is susceptible.

Today, the education ministers of the German federal states meet with Chancellor Merkel about the gradual reopening of schools. Many schools will reopen for their exam classes on 4 May. They do not receive any lessons, but they do receive support in exam preparation. German students simply have to take the exam.

In the Netherlands, primary schools, nurseries and special education reopen on May 11. Restrictive measures still apply to primary schools. For example, only half of the students go to school at the same time. Education staff will soon be eligible for low-threshold testing for corona.

In its advice to the Cabinet last week, the Outbreak Management Team emphasized that there are many uncertainties associated with the reopening of the schools, but that everything is still possible by weighing and weighing.

It is difficult to investigate what children contribute to the spread of the coronavirus. All restrictive measures, such as the closure of schools, make it difficult to identify this.

Prove
The German researchers took samples from more than 3,700 covid patients to measure the amount of virus particles. The patients were divided into ten-year age groups. There were 49 patients under ten years old and 78 who were between 11 and 20 years old. There were no relevant differences in the amount of virus found in patients of different age groups.

Children with a covid infection are generally less ill. As a result, they cough less and because they are smaller, smaller amounts of air are also used there. That could be an argument to say that children are less contagious, the researchers write. On the other hand, children are more active and often have closer social contacts. The researchers advocated more research, but they also draw a clear conclusion,

"In our study, we do not find any statistical evidence that the amount of virus particles in children with a covid infection is different. Therefore, we must warn against an unqualified reopening of schools and nurseries in the current situation with a largely comprehensible population and the need to keep contamination levels low through non-pharmaceutical measures. Children may be as contagious as adults. "

Monitor well
Drostens Dutch colleague Marion Koopmans, professor and head of virology at Erasmus MC, finds two things striking about Drost's study. "There are very few children among all people tested positive in Berlin," she said in the NOS Radio 1 News. "But in the children who have covid, you will find a similar amount of virus as in others."
WARNING !!!!STUPID
According to Koopmans, that does not say everything about infectiousness. "You also need symptoms to infect someone," she says. "All in all, children really seem to contribute less to the spread of the virus."
WARNING!STUPID

So there is no reason to reconsider the reopening under the conditions of primary schools, nurseries and special education. "Any relaxation you make will spread the virus. That's why you have to do that step by step and monitor it very carefully."

Children out of the picture
Travelers who brought the virus from infected areas caused the first clusters of covid patients in Europe. According to the German researchers, this makes it less likely that children introduced the virus to families.

Few children have been included in coronavirus studies. This is because children usually have very mild or even no disease symptoms. As a result, few children are tested and remain under the radar.

Researchers from a children's hospital in Wuhan estimated in a previous study that thousands of infections in children went unnoticed. They based it on the hundreds of seriously ill covid children who were in their hospital at the time. At the time, there were only ten thousand confirmed covid infections.

Some other small studies in Germany and China also concluded that children are infected by SARS-CoV-2 as often as adults.

A study in the Italian village of Vó, in which 80 percent of the population was tested twice and followed for two weeks, showed that half of the population was infected without disease symptoms. That group had as many virus particles with them as people with covid who did have symptoms.