Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic

by Scott Gottlieb

The new and more contagious variants that would start to spread in the winter and spring of 2021, such as B.1.1.7, the strain that originated in the U.K., and then B.1.617 which was first found in India, seemed to affect a higher proportion of children than the original strain. It wasn’t that B.1.1.7 was disproportionately targeting children more than adults; it was more contagious and virulent to everyone, children included. Data from about twenty thousand people infected with B.1.1.7, including three thousand children under ten, showed that while everyone was more impacted by the new strain, relative to the adults, the young kids remained about half as likely as adults to transmit the new strain to others.66 A study published in Nature provided some understanding of why young children seemed less likely to develop COVID and transmit the infection. The authors found that children produced lower levels of antibodies in response to coronavirus infection when compared to adults. It was an indication that children might have been clearing the infection more quickly and easily, and therefore weren’t generating the same robust immune reaction to the virus.