What was claimed
Children can’t get the new coronavirus.
Our verdict
Children can get Covid-19 but there have been relatively few cases in children and in general, their symptoms tend to be milder.
Children aren’t immune from the new coronavirus
5 March 2020
Our readers have asked us whether children are immune from the new coronavirus. Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson has also claimed on Twitter that the virus “doesn’t infect children”.
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Are children immune to the new coronavirus?
Children are not immune to the virus, and there have been confirmed cases of Covid-19 in children.
The World Health Organisation’s Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has said that relatively few cases are seen in children, but that more research was needed to understand why.
China, which currently has the largest number of Covid-19 cases, has seen several hundred cases of children under 10 with the disease, including newborns. In general, children have been found to present similar, although generally milder, symptoms than adults. But, as in adults, children with underlying health issues seem to have more severe cases of Covid-19, but the data is extremely limited.
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We got in touch to request a correction regarding a claim made in LBC.
They made a correction.
We got in touch regarding a claim made by a Twitter user, to make them aware of this fact check.
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