Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

According to recent research, minority and socio-economically disadvantaged children are more vulnerable to contracting Covid-19 infection. The study has been published in Journal Pediatrics.

The study highlighted significant hiatus between the rates of infection in the US in those who are privileged and those who are not. In an early study, it was revealed that minority and socio-economically disadvantaged adults were more likely to contract the infection.

Study researcher Monika Goyal from the Children’s National Hospital in the US said, “Some possible reasons may be socio-economic factors that increase exposure, differences in access to health care and resources, as well as structural racism.”

In the study, minority and socio-economically disadvantaged children in the U.S were found to account for having higher rates of Covid-19 infection. The research findings are based on analysis of data from a drive-through/walk-up Covid-19 testing site affiliated with Children’s National which is United States’ one of the first exclusively pediatric testing sites for the virus.

The first 1,000 patients tested at this site were found to have different infection rates according to their racial and ethnic groups. Among these patients, about seven per cent of non-Hispanic white children were found Covid-19 positive, while the figure went up to about 30 per cent for non-Hispanic Black and 46 per cent of Hispanic children.

Dr Goyal said, “You’re going from about one in 10 non-Hispanic white children to one in three nonHispanic Black children and one in two Hispanic children. It’s striking”.

Authors said, “There were additional disparities in exposure status. Of the 10 per cent of patients who reported known exposure to COVID-19, about 11 per cent of these were non-Hispanic white. However, non-Hispanic Black children were triple this number”.

The authors are now finding the reason behind the existence of these disparities and measures through which these differences can be reduced.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *