April 26, 2021

Simulated Identification of Silent COVID-19 Infections Among Children and Estimated Future Infection Rates With Vaccination

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Modeling and Prediction

Keywords (Tags): children, modeling prediction

• A modeling study determined that, in the absence of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines available to children, identifying 10-20% of “silent” or asymptomatic infections among children within 3 days after infection would reduce attack rates below 5% if only adults were vaccinated. Using an age-structured disease transmission model parameterized with census data, the study also found that if silent infections among children remained undetected, achieving the same attack rate would require a high vaccination coverage (≥81%) of this age group in addition to vaccination of adults, which the authors deemed unrealistic. 

Moghadas et al. (Apr 2021). Simulated Identification of Silent COVID-19 Infections Among Children and Estimated Future Infection Rates With Vaccination. JAMA Network Open. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.7097