If there is one takeaway from our latest discussion with Calgary researcher Stephen Freedman, it is that COVID-19 in young people is less severe. Disease - especially COVID – is not black and white however so there is more to the research than one simple finding.

There are the questions of why children tend to have less severe symptoms, how to best treat them, and the role they play in the transmission of the disease across the broader population. The study has enrolled children who tested positive and negative in 14 countries so they can compare the data to find some answers. With that information in hand, public health officials will be able to make better predictions and last month Freedman and his colleagues made a presentation to one of the World Health Organization’s working groups.

Stephen Freedman is a pediatric emergency physician and clinician scientist who got the nod from the CIHR in March to lead the international group of researchers studying the differences in children infected by SARS-CoV-2. He is also a member of Cumming School of Medicine’s Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute and the O’Brien Institute for Public Health. He talked with freelance broadcaster Don Hill about the study and about kids and COVID. There is a lot of ground to cover on the topic and here is part 1 of their conversation to kick things off.  Look for part 2 tomorrow.

 

(Note that in both parts of the discussion there are references to a Forbes article which received a great deal of attention. Here is "New Evidence Suggests Young Children Spread Covid-19 More Efficiently Than Adults. Evidence which the article hypes somewhat more that it manages to show.)