Dylan Chan, MD, PhD an Associate Professor in UCSF Pediatric Otolaryngology and Ana Marija Sola, a medical student at the UCSF School of Medicine has helped to create an online tool to determine the risk of asymptomatic infection with SARS-CoV-2 in the United States for children. This interactive calculator determines the likelihood of a child without Covid-19 symptoms will have an asymptomatic infection of Covid.
It is important to note that these estimates relate to children with asymptomatic infections with SARS CoV-2, detected by the standard RT-PCR test. The infectivity of these children is not well established; therefore, the true risk of transmission due to these case is not known.
"In order to understand the risk of COVID transmission in groups of children, we need to know two things- how common covid infections are in children, and how infectious those children are," says Dr. Chan. "I hope that the public can use this tool to help them understand the first of these important factors- to estimate how common covid infections can be among children in their communities."
This tool may be of interest to parents, teachers, childcare providers, physicians, and any community members who interact with groups of children.
Head to the UCSF Otolaryngology Pediatric Covid Risk Calculator here.
