Researchers in Ontario have found COVID-19 cases climbing among young people at what they say is a surprising and significant rate.
The news comes as daycares in the province are being allowed to reopen, though schools will remain closed, at least until September.
Ed McBean, a University of Guelph professor and the lead researcher of the new study, says while COVID-19 curves–as of mid-May–were flattening for other age groups, the number of new cases for people under 20 continued to rise.
“It was very surprising — a significant increase. They are not the biggest caseload at this point, but they are increasing at the highest rate,” McBean told CBC News.
“This was very unusual, especially given that daycares and schools are closed.”
McBean said he doesn’t know why the under-20 results differ.
He suspects it might be that frustration over lockdown measures is rising among children and teens as well as their parents.
The key takeaway from the study, McBean says, is to keep schools and daycare centres closed
Child child-care programs in Ontario were given permission to reopen last week. New research suggests that might not be such a great idea. (Charles Contant/CBC)
“All of the modelling we do says, ‘Gee, that’s going to be a problem,’ because while the very young don’t typically get catastrophic impacts [from COVID-19], they have the ability to bring it into the environment of the home, where children of that age are then able to pass it on to the older generations … so that’s the fear,” McBean told CBC’s Desmond Brown.
“The biggest problem going forward is: how are daycare and summer day camps going to function … because it’s all to do with contact between individuals. That’s the key and this is such an incredibly transmissible virus.
“Our suggestion is proceed very carefully and focus on the high-density areas and try to get a better understanding of how daycares might operate. They’re chaos … everybody shares toys and everything else. There’s only so much disinfection that you can actually create,” McBean told Brown.
McBean hopes to analyze similar data from other provinces.
The study has not yet been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.
With files from CBC News (Desmond Brown)
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