Schoolchildren are not active carriers of the coronavirus. Director of the Pasteur Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology of Rospotrebnadzor, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Areg Totolyan told RIA Novosti about this.
He stressed that it is adults who infect children, and not vice versa.
According to the scientist, the theory initially appeared that children carry the infection in an asymptomatic form or are carriers of the virus, and, accordingly, the elderly are infected from them. However, Scandinavia dispelled this misconception.
It turned out that the main “gateway” for the virus is the ACE2 receptor, the amount of which in the cells of children is minimal and increases with age. As a result, the child has few infected cells and the number of viral particles will also be small. This leads to the fact that children make up no more than ten percent of cases of COVID-19.
Earlier, the candidate of medical sciences Vladimir Zaitsev said that the loss of smell does not necessarily indicate infection with coronavirus – it is typical for colds in the nasal cavity, inflammation of the mucous membrane, and the upper parts of the nasal cavity. In such cases, the sense of smell first decreases, and then disappears altogether. The difference is that with coronavirus, recovery is slower, but Zaitsev advised first of all to rule out COVID-19 using tests.
