Adolescents appear to spread SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, as quickly and effectively as some adults, according to a study of more than 65,000 individuals in South Korea conducted during the onset of the 2020 pandemic. In the context of this study, news reports making such claims are mostly accurate. However, there are some important caveats to note when interpreting the broader implications of the findings. After the first case of COVID-19 in South Korea was discovered on Jan. 20, 2020, the nation adopted a “rigorous contact-tracing program” to track its spread throughout the population. Between the first reported case and March 27, researchers with the U.S. and Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracked more than 5,700 individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 by analyzing GPS, credit card transactions, and closed-circuit television. More than 59,000 people had come into contact with the original “index patients,” allowing researchers to determine how likely an infected individual was to transmit the virus to those living in their home and beyond. While researchers did not set out to characterize transmission rates specific to age groups, the claim is a byproduct of the work. Children between 10 and 19 years of age were shown to have a higher transmission rate within their households than younger children and were thus able to spread the virus as efficiently as, and in some cases at higher rates than, adults. More specifically, this age group had a transmission rate of over 18% within their own household, which is much higher than adults between the ages of 20 and 59 (ranging 7 and 14.7%). On the other hand, adolescents were much less likely to spread the disease to others outside of their home, and though children under 10 were found to transmit less than adults, they are still believed to contribute to community transmission. It is unclear why teens and tweens appear to be transmitting the disease more than adults, though the researchers speculate that it may be due to how children were socializing during the study period. “We also found the highest COVID-19 rate for household contacts of school-aged children, and the lowest for household contacts of children [up to nine years] in the middle of school closure. Despite [the] closure of their schools, these children might have interacted with each other, although we do not have data to support that hypothesis,” wrote the authors.
Teens and tweens transmit SARS-CoV-2 quicker and more efficiently than adults. 