SAN ANTONIO – With the reopening of school up in the air, many people are concerned about what the COVID-19 risks are for children.
Cherise Rohr-Allegrini, a local epidemiologist, says “they’re at risk. They don’t seem to get as sick but that doesn’t mean they don’t get sick at all. We’ve certainly seen some deaths in younger kids.”
In our KSAT Q&A session, she cited new research from Florida which shows that kids are getting infected at a fairly high rate. It says 31% of kids tested in the state were positive for COVID-19, compared to 11% of adults.
In Bexar County, according to the city’s website, people 19 years old and younger account for more than 14% of overall cases. While health experts have often said the virus may affect the elderly more seriously, cases of coronavirus in people age 60 and older account for less than 13 percent of local cases.
Rohr-Allegrini gave a comparison of how chickenpox affects children and adults differently.
“Kids get sick with chickenpox but it’s not usually deadly but if an adult gets it it’s much more severe. So we thought this might be similar,” Rohr-Allegrini said.
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As of Monday, there have been 3,907 cases among children under 19 years old in Bexar County. Although the city’s website does not specify, Dr. Rohr-Allegrini says the majority of those cases are among children older than ten years old. She also says there is an increasing number of hospitalizations among children.
“You have diabetes, obesity, heart disease which makes it more severe but in kids, more than half of them do not have any underlying conditions. They’re otherwise healthy and they’re requiring hospitalizations. So that’s pretty scary.”
Dr. Rohr-Allegrini has been working with private schools and teachers unions since the start of the school shutdown to work on providing a safe plan for students to learn. While Bexar County hasn’t seen a large number of cases in children, she believes that could be in part because of the precautions taken thus far.
“That could also be because kids aren’t getting exposed outside the home. They’ve been in quarantine. They’ve been with their families,” she said.
Rohr-Allegrini said schools closing when the pandemic began might have helped slow the spread among school-aged kids. Therefore she says we need to be very cautious about reopening schools amid consistently rising cases, especially when schools do not have resources to ensure safety protocols.
“It’s really difficult for our public schools to create an environment that is going to allow for 6-foot distance between desks, for example.”