Kids and the Coronavirus: What Everyone Wants to Know

Emerging information, and lots more to come

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today that it is launching a study to better understand coronavirus infections and children. The study — called Human Epidemiology and Response to SARS-CoV-2 (HEROS) — will try to determine what percentage of U.S. kids have been infected by the novel coronavirus, and whether rates of infection are different among kids who have other conditions like asthma or allergies.

“One interesting feature of this novel coronavirus pandemic is that very few children have become sick with Covid-19 compared to adults,” said National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony S. Fauci, MD, in a statement. “Is this because children are resistant to infection with SARS-CoV-2, or because they are infected but do not develop symptoms? The HEROS study will help us begin to answer these and other key questions.”

The study will enroll children from 2,000 families who are already participating in NIH-funded studies in 11 cities. Researchers will follow the children and their families for six months to see who gets infected, whether the virus is passed on to other family members, and which family members with the virus develop Covid-19.

For now, parents can take solace in the fact that while children can spread the virus, multiple studies suggest that kids do not get infected with it very often, and if they do, their symptoms…