Prevalence of SARS -Cov2 Carriage in Asymptomatic and Mildly-symptomatic Children

Cov2-SARS is an emerging respiratory virus of the coronavirus family responsible for a global epidemic since November 2019. As of March 10, 2020, it had caused more than 160,000 cases of corona virus disease (COVID-19), including more than 6,500 deaths worldwide. France is one of the main epidemic outbreaks with more than 5,000 confirmed cases and the number of diagnosed patients is increasing every day. The number of confirmed paediatric cases is relatively low, and the mortality rate in children is close to zero. This contrast suggests that children are more likely to present pauci-symptomatic or even asymptomatic forms of the disease, which are therefore undiagnosed in most cases. Given the rapid spread of this virus, and the fact that indigenous cases without an obvious chain of transmission now appear to be frequent in France, it is possible that the pauci-symptomatic or asymptomatic child may play a role in the transmission of the pathogen and the dynamics of the epidemic, as documented for other respiratory pathogens such as influenza. Based on this hypothesis, the closure of children's communities has been organized in France and other highly endemic countries.