Shanghai children’s study finds shorter Covid-19 fever, fewer symptoms

Fudan University hospital researchers also say asymptomatic children may have contributed to the city’s widespread transmission

While young vaccinated patients are spared serious illness, they are more than twice as likely to have no symptoms

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Researchers at Fudan University’s children’s hospital in Shanghai say vaccinated children are significantly less likely to show symptoms if they are infected with Covid-19. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 7:00pm, 5 May 2022Updated: 1:10pm, 31 May 2022

A study of Covid-19 patients at a Shanghai children’s hospital found that vaccinated children were twice as likely as unvaccinated minors to show no symptoms. Young patients with Covid-19 also experienced fever for shorter periods than with flu.

The study, at Fudan University’s children’s hospital, also suggests the city’s youngsters may have played an unwitting role in the widespread community transmission behind its worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic.

The results, which covered 376 paediatric Covid-19 patients at the hospital in March, were published on the medRxiv website ahead of peer review.

The children, aged from 11 days to 17 years with a median age of five, were admitted before Shanghai’s policy change allowing non-serious cases to stay in the city’s isolation facilities.

The researchers said the potential transmission role of asymptomatic and mild cases in children had been underestimated in the early stages of Shanghai’s Omicron outbreak, before mass screenings began on March 28.

“After citywide, large-scale screening, notifiable asymptomatic cases accounted for 90 per cent, more or less, in April,” they wrote.

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