Top Pediatrician Claims ‘Too Many Children Get Tested for COVID-19,’ Demands Schools Open

A top pediatrician in London claims that too many children are being tested for COVID-19 due to an understandable yet misplaced dread over outbreaks.

University of College London Professor Russell Viner demanded that schools instead stay open amid a second wave and stop their so-called "flip-flopping between closure and openings," which, he said, puts the youngsters' education in danger.

Professor Viner was speaking following revelation from his recently-published study that individuals below 20 years old are 44-percent less likely to develop COVID-19 compared to adults.

Meaning, the pediatrician argued, schools are at a lower risk of outbreaks. A previous study has also revealed the risk of children who die from the virus is far below one percent than a rate "closer to 10 percent in individuals aged older than 65 years."

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Over 240,000 Tests Run Each Day

Government data presents more than 620,000 young individuals were swabbed between May 28 and end-August, nearly doubled the number of people aged 70 to 79 years old who were tested, "at 364,000," and those whose age was above 80 years, at 350,000 tests completed.

According to reports, the United Kingdom's world-leading testing system "had lurched from crisis to crisis" in the past weeks, as demand for swabs "went through the roof" when students went back to their classrooms and parents returned to work.

The National Health Service has warned early Monday that the "beleaguered system is not up to the task" of handling an anticipated further spike in demand during winter.

Furthermore, currently, the UK Government is implementing running roughly 245,000 tests each day, although Prime Minister Boris Johnson has sworn to get the number reach 500,000 by end-October.

Leaders of this industry have already cautioned they are a couple of weeks behind the deadline because of delays acquiring vital equipment.

Concerning this, reports say, officials are "still light-years away from 'Operation Moonshot' target of 10 million tests each day.

On the other hand, Professor Viner said the UK is "overcautious" by having so many children go through the COVID-19 testing.

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Testing Too Many Children

Viner emphasized the need to think, saying, "Are we testing too many children?" because of the understandable but perhaps, "unscientific and misplaced" apprehensions about youngsters being infected in schools.

The professor added a need to stop some of the flip-flopping of the opening and closing of schools and acknowledge that perhaps we are testing too many children.

In the event of apparently unavoidable future waves of this global health crisis, there is a possibility of further pressures among the schools to close.

Meanwhile, the Department of Education disclosed that about four percent of state schools have not fully opened last week because of the COVID-19 outbreaks where "whole year groups have been sent home" after one of the students belonging to them tested positive for COVID-19.

The New Research Finding

In this study by Professor Viner, which was published last Friday in JAMA Pediatrics, a leading medical journal, he pulled together data from investigations on more than 41,000 children and young individuals globally aged up to 20 years.

Specifically, the research found that school children had the lowest infection rate. On the other hand, the oldest group, aged 17 or 18 to 20, showed similar infection rates as the adults.

The emphasized the research focused on the ability of children to develop the virus only. Their ability to transmit the infection is said to be the "subject of a separate study."

Other studies have found that children are just as likely to develop COVID-19 but hardly ever suffer any symptoms.

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