Addendum to: Children are not COVID-19 super spreaders: time to go back to school

摘要

Since publication of our original article,1 additional evidence has come to light providing further support for our viewpoint. Several high-quality studies of contact tracing (including household transmission) have demonstrated a significantly lower attack rate in children than adults,2 3 including in New York state and Israel where all household members had nasopharyngeal swabs tested with rt-PCR regardless of symptoms. Children were infected at around half the rate of adults within the same household. 4 5 A household contact study from The Netherlands using serology in addition to rt-PCR showed similar findings.6 Suggestions that children in these studies have been protected from transmission by school closures do not appreciate that a significant proportion of community transmission occurred prior to the closing of schools, after which a large burden of transmission was within households, from which children would not be shielded. This would not affect relative household contact attack rates.