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Topics: News, Health, US News, Coronavirus
Kit Roberts
Doctors have issued a warning about a new variant of Covid which is starting to spread.
Coronavirus has mutated before, and the latest strain is now reportedly spreading through around half of the US, as well as around the world.
This strain appears to be affecting children more than older people, according to experts.
Fortunately this mutation, which is called BA.3.2 or its more catchy nickname 'Cicada', after the animal, does not appear to be causing anymore serious symptoms than previous variants of Covid-19.
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Nonetheless, this is still Covid so the same precautions that we have known about around it, including regularly washing and sanitizing hands, are still in effect.
Covid can also still cause more serious symptoms in people who are already immunocompromised, either due to being very young or old, or an underlying health condition.
Dr Neil Maniar is a professor of public health, and works at Northeastern University in Boston.
He warned about the impact of the Cicada variant, telling Huffington Post: “The reports do seem to indicate that this variant is more prevalent in children, as opposed to older populations.
“There are probably a couple of reasons why it is more prevalent among kids,” he added.
These include things like children already being in an environment where germs can spread faster.
This might be at school, in daycare, or even at a summer camp, all of which will bring kids into contact with lots of other people who may have the variant.
But there could be another factor according to Dr William Schaffner, who is a a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
He explained that this is because older people have already had both exposure to the virus directly, as well as to the vaccine.
“The rest of us have at least some partial immunity, because we’ve had so much experience with COVID itself or with the vaccine, whereas young children are less experienced with COVID," he said.
“I think it’s possible that this new variant is finding them more susceptible and so able to spread among children."
Meanwhile, professor of public health at Northeastern University in Boston Dr Neil Maniar, explained that this also isn't the first time that something new affected children more.
“We had a variant a few years back that was similar, and that may be partly because [kids’] immune systems are still developing," said Maniar.
"Kids don’t have the same immune memory that older adults do because they just haven’t been exposed over a period of time to as many different pathogens.”