But KI pediatrician and clinical epidemiologist Jonas Ludvigsson, who has published two review articles about COVID-19 in children, thinks tracing infected people’s contacts is of little use at this point in the epidemic. “The virus is so widespread in society that responsible people do not think it is a good idea to trace individuals. We only test symptomatic individuals. I agree with that,” he wrote in response to Science asking whether researchers were tracking school outbreaks.
Ludvigsson added that Swedish privacy laws allow health care personnel and school officials to notify parents and school staff about an infection only “if a person’s life is at risk.” Because severe complications from the new coronavirus
are so rare in children, that does not apply to cases of COVID-19, he says. “Consider if your own child … had COVID-19,” he wrote. “None of the kids will want to play with a child who has COVID-19, even if most kids will have no symptoms or only ‘some fever and a cough.’”
In a review paper published 19 May in Acta Paediatrica, Ludvigsson concluded that
children are “unlikely to be the main drivers” of COVID-19 spread. He cited case studies from France and
Australia but wrote that, “So far there have been no reports of COVID-19 outbreaks in Swedish schools,” citing “personal communication” from Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, on 12 May. “This supports the argument that asymptomatic children attending schools are unlikely to spread the disease,” Ludvigsson wrote.
