Low transmission of SARS-CoV-2 derived from children in family clusters: an observational study of family households in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, Spain
Author
Mele-Casas, Maria
Launes, Cristian
F. de Sevilla, Mariona
Hernandez-Garcia, Maria
Pons-Tomas, Gemma
Bassat, Quique
Fumado, Victoria
Fortuny, Claudia
Garcia-Miquel, Aleix
Ajanovic, Sara
Cubells, Marta
Penela-Sanchez, Daniel
Arias, Sara
Balanza, Nuria
Baro, Barbara
Millat-Martinez, Pere
Alonso, Sergio
Alvarez-Lacalle, Enric
Catala, Marti
Muñoz-Almagro, Carmen
Gratacos, Eduard
Jordan, Iolanda
Garcia-Garcia, Juan Jose
Publication date
2022ISSN
1932-6203
Abstract
Background: Family clusters offer a good opportunity to study viral transmission in a stable setting. We aimed to analyze the specific role of children in transmission of SARS-CoV-2 within households. Methods: A prospective, longitudinal, observational study, including children with documented acute SARS-CoV-2 infection attending 22 summer-schools in Barcelona, Spain, was performed. Moreover, other patients and families coming from other school-like environments that voluntarily accessed the study were also studied. A longitudinal follow-up (5 weeks) of the family clusters was conducted to determine whether the children considered to be primary cases were able to transmit the virus to other family members. The household reproduction number (Re*) and the secondary attack rate (SAR) were calculated. Results: 1905 children from the summer schools were screened for SARS-CoV-2 infection and 22 (1.15%) tested positive. Moreover, 32 additional children accessed the study voluntarily. Of these, 37 children and their 26 households were studied completely. In half of the cases (13/26), the primary case was considered to be a child and secondary transmission to other members of the household was observed in 3/13, with a SAR of 14.2% and a Re* of 0.46. Conversely, the SAR of adult primary cases was 72.2% including the kids that gave rise to the contact tracing study, and 61.5% without them, and the estimated Re* was 2.6. In 4/13 of the paediatric primary cases (30.0%), nasopharyngeal PCR was persistently positive > 1 week after diagnosis, and 3/4 of these children infected another family member (p<0.01). Conclusions: Children may not be the main drivers of the infection in household transmission clusters in the study population. A prolonged positive PCR could be associated with higher transmissibility.
Document Type
Article
Document version
Published version
Language
English
Subject (CDU)
61 - Medicina
616.9 - Malalties infeccioses i contagioses. Febres
Keywords
Infeccions pediàtriques
SARS-CoV-2
Pediatria
Reacció en cadena transcriptasa-polimerasa inversa
Serologia
Famílies humanes
Escoles
Prova de virus
Infecciones pediátricas
SARS-CoV-2
Pediatría
Reacción en cadena de la transcriptasa inversa-polimerasa
Serología
Familias humanas
Escuelas
Pruebas de virus
Pediatric infections
SARS CoV 2
Pediatrics
Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction
Serology
Human families
Schools
Virus testing
Pages
13
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Collection
17;11
Is part of
PLoS ONE
Citation
Mele-Casas, Maria; Launes, Cristian; F. de Sevilla, Mariona [et al.]. Low transmission of SARS-CoV-2 derived from children in family clusters: an observational study of family households in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, Spain. PLoS One, 2022, 17(11), e0277754. Disponible en: <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0277754>. Fecha de acceso: 12 dic. 2022. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0277754
Link to the related item
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- Ciències de la Salut [532]
Rights
© 2022 Mele-Casas et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/