Coronavirus infecting fewer children as they’re less vulnerable than adults to the bug, experts say

CHILDREN are "less susceptible” to contracting coronavirus as their immune systems have not developed “excessively” from fighting other forms of influenza, say experts.

The majority of deaths from the disease have occurred in people who already had serious health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high blood pressure or cancer.

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According to data from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control (CCDC), there is a “zero mortality rate” for humans under the age of nine – while adults aged 80 or over have a 14.8 per cent chance of dying if they contract the virus.

Professor Robert Booy from the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCVIS) in Sydney said: “In adults, they are reacting quite violently because perhaps they have seen a previous coronavirus infection and that’s set up the immune system to react inappropriately and excessively.”

Australia’s chief medical officer Dr Brendan Murphy said he was surprised at how few children seemed to have been identified among the confirmed cases.

He said: “It’s very unusual compared to influenza. We don’t know whether children might be getting the disease but (their symptoms) are so mild they are not being picked up, or they’re not becoming sick, or whether they are somehow less susceptible.”

Theories suggest that children are less likely to have been exposed to the virus in the first place - or that there is something different about how a child's body responds to the virus.

However, epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, told the Harvard Gazette that the effect of coronavirus on children was still unknown.

He said: “We just don’t understand whether children are getting infected at low rates or just not showing very strong symptoms.

“It’s definitely the case that the older you are, the more at risk of getting infected you are, and if you get symptomatic infection, the more at risk of dying you are.

“We need detailed studies in the households of children who are exposed to an infected person. We need to find out if their children get infected, if they shed the virus, and if that virus is infectious.”

In a 2007 report, experts from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, (CDC) determined that no children or adolescents died from SARS.

The report said there was only one instance in which a child transmitted SARS to another person.