2019-nCoV: Polite with children!

Caselli, Désirée; Aricò, Maurizio

In their report of the characteristics of the first 425 cases observed in Wuhan as of 4 This clearly shows that three different acute respiratory syndromes developed as epidemic in the last decades showed a reduced propensity to involve children. Coming to the hottest topic, data from Wuhan show that at an early evaluation, the pediatric population, even in this very-high risk area, appears to be at an unexpectedly low risk to develop the disease. 2 Why may this happen remains unclear. Are children absolutely protected from infection or only from the risk to develop the disease following infection? Formal demonstration of the ability of 2019-nCov to infect a child has been provided by Chan et al. In their report, when screening for 2019-nCov the asymptomatic members of the family of a patient with pneumonia, they documented infection in a child who yet remained asymptomatic. 5 Thus, this first and so far unique case shows that infection of children is possible although apparently extremely rare; furthermore, it was not followed by the development of the respiratory disease at the time of writing.