How do children spread the coronavirus? 

The science still isn’t clear

Schools are beginning to reopen — but scientists are still trying to understand what the deal is with kids and COVID-19.

The role of children in spreading the coronavirus has been a key question since the early days of the pandemic. Now, as some countries allow schools to begin reopening after weeks in lockdown, scientists are racing to figure this out.

Children represent a small fraction of confirmed COVID-19 cases — less than 2% of reported infections in China, Italy and the United States have been in people under 18 years old.

But researchers are divided on whether children are less likely than adults to get infected and to spread the virus. Some say that a growing body of evidence suggests children are at lower risk. They are not responsible for the majority of transmission and the data support opening schools, says Alasdair Munro, a paediatric infectious-diseases researcher at University Hospital Southampton, UK.