"Recent evidence suggests that children likely have the same or higher viral loads in their nasopharynx compared with adults and that children can spread the virus effectively in households and camp settings."                                                      "This [closing schools early in the pandemic] may explain the low incidence in children compared with adults. Comparing trends in pediatric infections before and after the return to in-person school and other activities may provide additional understanding about infections in children."                                                               Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated COVID guidance

East College Prep High School senior Jocelyn Hernandez follows a remote Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus class while sitting in a community garden near her home, August 14, 2020 in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, Calif. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

Since the global pandemic struck the United States in early spring, numbers and rates of  coronavirus cases have risen markedly in children. It had been generally accepted viewing the results of infections that children were spared the worst symptoms that COVID-19 could raise, and they were being infected at substantially lower numbers than older people of all age ranges in the general population. That initial impression has since undergone a profound adjustment.

As a new school year approaches, after the precipitate shutdown of schools with the first wave of COVID, a growing awareness of the risk that young people and their families face is striking alarm. Emergency use authorization was granted for a saliva-based coronavirus test by the Food and Drug Administration. The test, developed by Yale University researchers, is recognized as a route to reducing turnaround commercial laboratory times.

Over one thousand coronavirus-related deaths are being reported daily in the United States, with health officials reporting 1,220 new deaths and 57,120 new infections on Saturday alone. The rosy confidence relating to children's low infection rate and non-threatening symptoms related to COVID that originally reassured the medical community and parents, is now recognized as a factor linked to the first-wave action of school closings.

That, and other public health measures such as social distancing certainly may have contributed to the low rates seen early on of coronavirus infection during the early days of the pandemic. Now, it is known that children between ages five and 17 test positive for the coronavirus at higher rates than any other age group, in accordance with CDC data; positive rates seen to be exceeding ten percent in public and private lab tests.

Children are recognized to experience a similar virus incubation period as do adults but are less likely by far to develop severe symptoms. On the other hand, roughly a third of children who are hospitalized for virus complications are placed in intensive care units at the same rate as are adults. With the anticipated start of the new academic year, concern turns toward new challenges that will most certainly arise.

Over 100 students and staff tested positive for the coronavirus in recent days and hundreds more were sent into quarantine in Mississippi, where return to school for in-person learning has been initiated. Cases have been reported in close to fifty percent of the schools in the state. The highest daily reported deaths in the country emanate from Mississippi, tracking by The Washington Post reveals.

Elsewhere, virus concerns have forced officials to cancel classes or reverse plans to introduce students to reopened schools where the academic year is set to begin. On Saturday, a school district in Nebraska held back opening for a week because three staff members had tested positive. Classes have been cancelled as well in schools in Georgia and Tennessee.

In Canada, provinces are attempting variants on both in-class and remote teaching, with parents asked to inform their school boards in advance which option they prefer for their children. This, at a time when parents are bedevilled by the choices; personal attendance three days a week, remote the other two days. And of course it isn't only parents uncertain whether or not to return their children to classrooms which even under new rules will keep students in one classroom for all subjects and will mandate no more than 15 students to a class, but teachers also, concerned over an elevated risk of infection.