Why young children are less likely to get severe Covid as XEC variant spreads across Europe

It has been almost five years since the first case of Covid-19 was discovered and one of the first things scientists were able to identify about the disease was that young children were less likely to become severely ill. Cases of coronavirus are currently spreading across Europe with new variant XEC suspected to be the cause.

The number of people being taken to hospital with coronavirus in Wales doubled in September. The XEC variant was first detected in Germany in June.

The strain is a combination of the KS.1.1 and KP.3.3 variants. So far the symptoms of the variant are no different to previous variants of Covid.

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A new research paper that looks into why pre-schoolers, who are under five years old, are less likely to develop severe disease has been published. The paper describes how it isn't that these children haven't had Covid as data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 90% of children from infancy to the age of 17 have been exposed to coronavirus. For the latest health and Covid news sign up to our newsletter here.

Scientists worldwide were perplexed by this as children of this age are often significantly affected by the flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). One study in America discovered that, just like adults, if a child was infected with coronavirus, antibodies specific to the virus rose quickly. However unlike adults, where those antibodies then declined again over several months, children tended to maintain the levels of antibodies, or saw them rise, for a much longer period.

Dr Bali Pulendran, lead investigator of research carried out at Stanford, also described pre-schoolers as having an "abundance of inflammation-promoting proteins" in the nasal cavity area. One of these proteins is called alpha-interferon, which can shut down viral replication in infected cells, as reported in Medicalxpress.