Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): What Should Parents Know About COVID-19 Infection in Children?
Parents are unlikely to get infected by their young children. High schoolers bear a greater risk.
1. Can my child fall severely ill from the novel coronavirus if schools reopen?
Children are at very low risk of serious illness or death from COVID-19. There have been reports of a significant but extremely rare inflammatory syndrome in children due to COVID-19, but the syndrome appears to be manageable with medical intervention.
Overall, Americans under the age of 25 represent 0.15% of all COVID-19 fatalities in the U.S. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the odds of an individual under 25 dying from COVID-19 are around 2.2 per million, or 1 in 447,000.
Hospitalization rates among school-aged children are also sufficiently low to justify the reopening of schools. Influenza pandemics carry significantly greater risks for children, but the U.S. does not close schools for the flu.
2. What is the risk that my child will spread the COVID-19 to my family?
Evidence suggests that transmission from young children to adults is extremely rare. On the other hand, adolescents — especially high school students — do appear capable of transmitting the virus.
In a study out of Iceland, not a single instance of a child infecting parents was found. Similarly, a study in northern France found zero cases of an infection transmitting from student to teacher.
Rather, within families, the virus is usually transmitted from adults to children. A Dutch study found no instances in which a child under 12 years old was the first infected person in their family. Further, children are less often infected with the virus than adults.
An exception to this trend occurred in Israel, where an outbreak at a high school infected over 100 students and 15 staff members. Notably, teachers and students at the school did not wear masks and the school did not aggressively quarantine infected individuals.
This experience highlights the value of ensuring that if high schools reopen, they do so with proper protocols in place to help minimize the likelihood of transmission between students.
3. What should give me comfort that my risk of getting infected by young children is low?
Most European countries reopened schools last spring, without a rise in COVID-19 cases, including Austria, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and Singapore.
4. What is the risk that other teachers or staff will spread COVID-19?
A more meaningful risk is the transmission from adults to other adults in schools. It is important that teachers social distance from one another when in a classroom setting and that parents who are volunteering in schools also take proper precautions.
Younger healthy people, especially those under 45, are at lower risk of serious illness and death. But older teachers and those with certain underlying cardiovascular, metabolic, or autoimmune conditions will need to take extra precautions, and in some cases stay home, in order to protect themselves.
5. Shouldn’t we wait for a vaccine before we reopen schools?
While we should hope for a vaccine to be available soon, we cannot wait to reopen schools until we have one. There has never been a vaccine developed for a coronavirus before. The fastest vaccine pre-qualification process that the World Health Organization has ever conducted was for Ebola, which took five years. Scientists have been trying to develop a vaccine for HIV for nearly 40 years, and we still don’t have one.
It is essential to understand that as schools reopen, some children will test positive for COVID-19, for the same reasons that they test positive in the general population. Teachers should fully expect that some of their students will test positive.
6. How will my child be harmed if schools remain closed?
A national survey of American parents found that 71 percent believed their children learned less than they would have had schools remained open. That survey also found that 40 percent of students had no individual interactions with teachers.
Beyond the immediate educational impacts, ongoing shutdowns of schools also significantly affects the social and public health of American children, and particularly disadvantaged kids, as the American Academy of Pediatrics details. Widespread school closures, suspended sports and other extracurricular activities, and shuttered public parks and playgrounds have serious negative physical consequences for children.
School closures also harm parents, many of whom may not be able to work if their children are at home, especially if they cannot find or even afford child care alternatives.
7. What kind of precautions should I take to protect my child?
Parents should conduct temperature tests each day at home in order to identify symptomatic children and keep them at home. If a teacher or child is found to be symptomatic, he or she should stay home for two weeks.
Older children, such as those in high school and middle school, as well as teachers and staff should wear masks, with accommodations for those with health needs, the deaf, and other special populations.
8. How will schools protect my child’s safety?
Every school should conduct temperature and symptom screening of every child, teacher, and staffer on a daily basis in order to identify potential positive cases of COVID-19.
Schools need to have a clear plan for screening students, teachers, and staff, and a clear plan for sending individuals home who screen positively.
School health staff, in particular, should be trained in the proper wearing of masks, and be able to offer that instruction to students and teachers.
9. What are trusted resources for the latest data on school reopening?
Reopening America’s Schools and Colleges During COVID-19 by the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP.org), which details all of the considerations and options for school reopenings, from pre-K all the way to college.
COVID-19 Planning Considerations: Guidance for School Re-Entry by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The AAP’s guidelines are more practical than those of the CDC, and better aligned with the latest scientific evidence.
