Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Viral Load in the Upper Respiratory Tract of Children and Adults With Early Acute Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

  1. Stéphanie Baggio
  2. Arnaud G L’Huillier
  3. Sabine Yerly
  4. Mathilde Bellon
  5. Noémie Wagner
  6. Marie Rohr
  7. Angela Huttner
  8. Géraldine Blanchard-Rohner
  9. Natasha Loevy
  10. Laurent Kaiser
  11. Frédérique Jacquerioz
  12. Isabella Eckerle

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Abstract

The factors that contribute to transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by children are unclear. We analyzed viral load at the time of diagnosis in 53 children and 352 adults with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the first 5 days post symptom onset. No significant differences in SARS-CoV-2 RNA loads were seen between children and adults.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.17.20155333: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethics: The work was approved by the Cantonal ethics committee (no. 2020-00813; no. 2020-00835, no. 2020-00516).
    Consent: All study participants and/or their legal guardians provided written informed consent.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    One limitation of our study was a limited sample size of children, thus age group comparisons might have lacked power. Another limitation was inclusion of symptomatic patients only, thus not reflecting the whole spectrum of SARS-CoV-2 infection, especially the asymptomatic presentation frequently seen in children. Furthermore, we included patients tested by two different methods, however both of which showed close correlation for sensitivity, specificity and for VL quantification by an external standard curve. To our knowledge, our study is the largest analysis on VL across age groups for which time of symptom onset is available, and here analysing age as a continuous variable clearly showed no relationship between VL and age. As we found similar VL in children versus adults and around half of specimens above a threshold correlated with infectious virus presence, our results suggest that the presumed lower transmission from children is not due to lower VL in the URT compared to adults. As VL may not be the only factor for effective SARS-CoV-2 transmission, other factors might contribute to less efficient transmission in children, even with high VLs. Further studies are needed to understand the role of children in transmission, especially now that containment measures are lifted in most countries, to enable children to safely benefit from education and much needed social interactions among their peers.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1093/cid/ciaa1157
  3. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.17.20155333: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementEthics The work was approved by the Cantonal ethics committee (no. 2020-00813; no. 2020-00835, no. 2020-00516).Randomizationnot detected.Blindingnot detected.Power Analysisnot detected.Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Data from additional tools added to each annotation on a weekly basis.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore is not a substitute for expert review. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers) in the manuscript, and detects sentences that appear to be missing RRIDs. SciScore also checks to make sure that rigor criteria are addressed by authors. It does this by detecting sentences that discuss criteria such as blinding or power analysis. SciScore does not guarantee that the rigor criteria that it detects are appropriate for the particular study. Instead it assists authors, editors, and reviewers by drawing attention to sections of the manuscript that contain or should contain various rigor criteria and key resources. For details on the results shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.07.17.20155333v1 on medRxiv