A massive American government study has proved what correspondent.world has been reporting for months. Children under the age of nine are eight times less likely to catch Covid-19 than adults. And only a very tiny number of children have died.
14 July 2020A huge government study ( A ) – published on July 10 – of more than 1.3 million cases of Covid in the U.S. from January to the end of May found that there were infections in children under age 10 were only 1.5 percent of all infections. People aged between 20 and 29 (inclusive), who make up 13.8 percent of the total.
In other words, children under 10 were nine times less likely to catch Covid than people on average two decades older than them.
There are similar or even bigger figures for all age-groups (30-39,40-49, and 50-59) of adults aged 59 or less. [For the sake of comparison we have assumed there are approximately the same number of people in each of the ten-year groupings of those under 60.]
Another US government study ( B ), from February to the end of May, revealed that there were only sixteen confirmed deaths of young people under the age of 19, while there were 10,620 confirmed Covid-19 deaths of all people under 65. That is a tiny proportion (less than 0.16 per cent) of all Covid-19 deaths.
It shows that children get it on average far more mildly than adults do.
[The study did not have statistics how serious the young children’s symptoms were.]
Here are links to each of these studies:
| Age group (yrs) | Males | Females | Total | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. (%) | Cumulative incidence* | No. (%) | Cumulative incidence* | No. (%) | Cumulative incidence* | |
| 0–9 | 10,743 (1.7) | 52.5 | 9,715 (1.4) | 49.7 | 20,458 (1.5) | 51.1 |
| 10–19 | 24,302 (3.8) | 113.4 | 24,943 (3.7) | 121.4 | 49,245 (3.7) | 117.3.3 |
| 20–29 | 85,913 (13.3) | 370.0 | 96,556 (14.3) | 434.6 | 182,469 (13.8) | 401.6 |
| 30–39 | 108,319 (16.8) | 492.8 | 106,530 (15.8) | 490.5 | 214,849 (16.3) | 491.6 |
| 40–49 | 109,745 (17.0) | 547.0 | 109,394 (16.2) | 536.2 | 219,139 (16.6) | 541.6 |
| 50–59 | 119,152 (18.4) | 568.8 | 116,622 (17.3) | 533.0 | 235,774 (17.9) | 550.5 |
| 60–69 | 93,596 (14.5) | 526.9 | 85,411 (12.7) | 434.6 | 179,007 (13.6) | 478.4 |
| 70–79 | 53,194 (8.2) | 513.7 | 52,058 (7.7) | 422.7 | 105,252 (8.0) | 464.2 |
| ≥80 | 41,394 (6.4) | 842.0 | 72,901 (10.8) | 940.0 | 114,295 (8.7) | 902.0 |
| All ages | 646,358 (100.0) | 401.1 | 674,130 (100.0) | 406.0 | 1,320,488 (100.0) | 403.6 |
Abbreviation: COVID-19 = coronavirus disease 2019.
* Per 100,000 population.
† The analytic dataset excludes cases reported through case surveillance that were missing information on sex (n = 19,918) or age (n = 2,379).
| Characteristic | No. (%) | |
|---|---|---|
| Case-based surveillance* | Supplemental surveillance† | |
| N = 52,166 | N = 10,647 | |
| Age, yrs (median, IQR) | 78 (67–87) | 75 (64–84) |
| Age group (yrs) | ||
| All <65 | 10,626 (20.4) | 2,681 (25.2) |
| <18 | 16 (<0.1) | 5 (<0.1) |
| 18–44 | 1,478 (2.8) | 423 (4.0) |
| 45–54 | 2,675 (5.1) | 704 (6.6) |
| 55–64 | 6,457 (12.4) | 1,549 (14.5) |
| All ≥65 | 41,528 (79.6) | 7,966 (74.8) |
| 65–74 | 11,245 (21.6) | 2,463 (23.1) |
| 75–84 | 14,148 (27.1) | 2,900 (27.2) |
| ≥85 | 16,135 (30.9) | 2,603 (24.4) |
| Unknown | 12 (<0.1) | 0 (0) |