Living with children does not carry a greater risk of getting Covid-19, according to a big study held in the U.K.
Instead, findings revealed a link between living with children and a lower risk of dying from Covid-19 compared to those that did not live with children.
The researchers from the University of Oxford and London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine examined 9 million adults in the U.K. under the age of 65 between February and August to determine whether the risk of infection with Covid-19 and the risk of severe consequences from having the virus was not the same to those living with and without children.
According to the team, living with children under the age of 11 “was not associated with increased risks of recorded Covid-19 infection, Covid-19 related hospital or ICU (intensive care unit) admission but was associated with reduced risk of Covid-19 death.”
Moreover, living with children aged 12-18 years was linked with a small increased risk of recorded Covid-19 infection, but not associated with other Covid-19 consequences.
The researchers noted that living with children of any age was could lower the risk of dying from non-Covid-19 causes.
They also investigated an additional 2.5 million adults above the age of 65 and also found that “there was no association between living with children and outcomes related to Covid-19.”
Researchers stressed that parents used to have lower all-cause mortality than individuals without children. They explained that the “protective mechanisms of having children are likely to be multifactorial, including healthier behaviours among parents, e.g. in relation to smoking and alcohol, and self-selection of healthier individuals becoming parents.”
They furthered that “beneficial changes in immune function from exposure to young children have been proposed to cause reduced mortality among parents.”
The findings come amid questions about the role of children and adolescents in the transmission of the virus. However, for the researchers of this study, there was “accruing evidence” that indicates that when it comes to the coronavirus, “lower susceptibility and possibly lower infectiousness among children means that they may not transmit infection more than adults.”
The effect of living with children
As for their conclusion, the researchers believe that “for adults living with children there is no evidence of an increased risk of severe Covid-19 outcomes” and that, when it comes to school closures, they had “found no evidence for a reduction in risk following school closure.”
“These findings have implications for determining the benefit-harm balance of children attending school in the Covid-19 pandemic,” they noted.
The study has not yet been released in a medical journal or peer-reviewed. It received financial support from the Medical Research Council, part of U.K. Research and Innovation, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the British government’s Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy.
In August, a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association showed that more than 97,000 children in the US tested positive for coronavirus in the last two weeks of July.
Data revealed a 40% increase in child cases across the states and cities that were investigated. The age range for children who tested positive for coronavirus differed by state. Some reported only those up to age 14 while Alabama pushed the limit to 24.
