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Since SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, was first recognized as a close cousin of the virus that caused the SARS outbreak of 2003, scientists have looked to the experience of that earlier epidemic to glean insight into the current global health crisis.
Kids were largely unaffected in the original SARS outbreak. In Hong Kong, no one under the age of 24 years died, while more than 50 percent of patients over 65 succumbed to the infection. Globally, less than 10 percent of those diagnosed with SARS were children, and only 5 percent of them required intensive care.
It is quite likely that children are an important source of the virus.
“There were repeated incursions from animals to humans, with both SARS and MERS, and the assumption by many was maybe children are just not exposed to the infected civet cats or camels,” says ...
