In a commentary, published on the study, scientists, including Roberta L. DeBiasi from the The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in the US, said children may play an important role in the COVID-19 transmission. “To our knowledge, no prior studies have systematically focused on the frequency of asymptomatic infection in children or the duration of symptoms and viral shedding in both asymptomatic and symptomatic children,” the researchers noted in the commentary. The findings revealed that the duration of symptoms varied widely, from three days to nearly three weeks. The authors of the commentary noted that there was also a significant spread in how long children continued to shed virus and could be potentially infectious. The scientists cautioned that children -- a group widely thought to develop mostly mild disease that quickly passes -- can retain symptoms for weeks, and even asymptomatic children continued to shed virus for a long time after initial testing, making them potential key in the transmission of the disease.

Source: Hindustan Times August 29, 2020 10:05 UTC