Children aren’t spreaders, so we’re harming them by keeping schools shut — Wits prof

We are “indirectly putting children’s lives and futures on the line” by keeping schools shut, said Wits University vaccinology and infectious disease expert Prof Shabir Madhi, noting that new evidence shows that children are insignificant spreaders of the virus.

He said children generally do not get sick even when infected, they do not have a high viral load, and they hardly spread it to older generations.

In a webinar with presenter Ronald Abvajee, Madhi said the closure of schools was based on earlier information “which we now know is not accurate”.

Madhi said the move to close schools was guided by the perspective of other respiratory viruses like flu, but Covid-19 behaved very differently.

“It is beyond any doubt that schoolgoing children are an important vector of transmission of flu,” he said. “They give the sickness to each other, to teachers, to others in their households and the community in general.”

Because of this, many were concerned that “the same would happen with Covid-19”.

This point of view, he said, was based on the information available at the time, but “all the evidence emerging right now from countries, including the Netherlands, Australia and China, shows that children are not vectors of transmission and only play a very small role in infecting adults”.

Studies had shown that children over the age of 18 had infected 15% of their contacts, but children under 18 had hardly passed it on. 

Madhi said food security and malnutrition are much bigger risks worsened by lockdown, as is the fact that children weren’t turning up for vaccines for disease that would affect them far more severely.

“The strategy of keeping schools closed is not in the interests of our children. For children under seven, when cognitive development is at its height, there is no way to regain the loss to the shaping of the mind that happens and is incurred by being out of school,” he says.

He agreed, however, that the country should not be “reckless” in opening schools and certain measures should be mandatory.

These would include physical distancing, a staggered approach to the school day, a phased-in approach to opening schools again, teachers carrying hand sanitiser in their pockets, water and soap available for all children, assemblies and other school gatherings no longer allowed, and teachers moving from class to class rather than pupils doing so.

Keeping children out of school, said Madhi, “shows a lack of understanding in terms of the virus”.

He said children “are not going to be a contribution to the burden on hospitals or number of deaths. For reasons we don’t understand yet, children don’t seem to be affected”.

Ultimately, flattening the curve doesn’t mean ending the virus or reducing the number of people who contract it, he said. It means lengthening the time over which those people get it.

“So if we accept that most children are probably going to get it and are not going to be significant vectors in terms of passing it on, what other harms are we bringing to their health by keeping schools closed?”