<story><title>Covid-19 contact tracing study finds children key to spread</title><url>https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/09/30/largest-covid-19-contact-tracing-study-date-finds-children-key-spread-evidence</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>argonaut</author><text>Unfortunately, it&amp;#x27;s difficult to conclude that children are the &amp;quot;key&amp;quot; to superspreading, because the study suffers from the same limitation as the South Korean study the media used to make the same claim.&lt;p&gt;Which is that it&amp;#x27;s impossible to determine the direction of transmission. Just because someone (a child or young adult) developed symptoms first doesn&amp;#x27;t mean they actually got infected first, they might have actually gotten infected at the same time as their supposed contact. When the South Korean study removed cases of shared exposure, the new study found those children did not in fact transmit very much. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;apsmunro&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1311616493445165058&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;apsmunro&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1311616493445165058&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;This Twitter discussion does not make me think they did anything differently than the South Korean study that was later corrected: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;apsmunro&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1312301601156194304&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;apsmunro&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1312301601156194304&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Covid-19 contact tracing study finds children key to spread</title><url>https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/09/30/largest-covid-19-contact-tracing-study-date-finds-children-key-spread-evidence</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>azalemeth</author><text>NB:&lt;p&gt;(a) The original title of this article is &amp;#x27;Largest COVID-19 contact tracing study to date finds children key to spread, evidence of superspreaders&amp;#x27; -- I edited it to fit within the HN character limit&lt;p&gt;(b) The actual article is published in Science: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;science.sciencemag.org&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;early&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;29&amp;#x2F;science.abd7672&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;science.sciencemag.org&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;early&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;29&amp;#x2F;scie...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;(c) This is a large study on 500k people in India. The researchers found that 71% of infected individuals did not infect any of their contacts, while a mere 8% of infected individuals accounted for 60% of new infections -- providing evidence for so-called &amp;#x27;superspreaders&amp;#x27;. Regarding children, the researchers found that &amp;#x27;These patterns of enhanced transmission risk in similar-age pairs were strongest among children ages 0-14 years and among adults ages ≥65 years&amp;#x27;, 
and that they &amp;#x27;identif[ied] high prevalence of infection among children who were contacts of cases around their own age&amp;#x27; -- something that was also true in adults.&lt;p&gt;The overall case-to-fatality ratio was between 0.05% at ages 5-17 years to 16.6% at ages ≥85 years.</text></comment>