New research reveals that childhood omicron infections have been under-reported in Canadian schools medrxivpreprint uofg MemorialU Omicron COVID19 SARSCoV2 Canada Children OmicronInfection
By Dr. Liji Thomas, MDJan 19 2023Reviewed by Aimee Molineux From the early days of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, researchers have recognized that many cases were going undiagnosed, resulting in under-reporting at all levels. This impacted public health strategies, from risk assessment to the evolution of planning and monitoring preventive and therapeutic guidelines.
The BA.1/BA.2 subvariants of Omicron first appeared in South Africa in early November 2021 but spread like wildfire, reaching Canada within three weeks. In NL, the first case was identified by December 15, 2021. This broke through the zero-COVID strategy that had successfully kept the infection at very low rates and resulted in the highest-ever case counts since the pandemic began.
The study, posted online to the medRxiv* preprint server, covered the two provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador , which underwent a surge of Omicron cases in January 2022. This involved BA.1/BA.2 subvariants. Subsequently, all school students were required to test themselves. Household positivity was preferred as the measure of case positivity in this study for two reasons. Firstly, the authorities recommended self-testing for the family of anyone who tested positive by RAT. Secondly, infections are more likely to spread among household members than to others outside the home.
Based on unrestricted testing, the reported prevalence of under-reporting in this study agrees with that of earlier research. The COVID-19 Immunity Taskforce uses serology to confirm the presence of this infection and arrived at an estimated under-reporting ratio of 1:3, from January to February 2022. The major chunk of test positives came from elementary school, perhaps because only 3% of this population had been fully vaccinated vs. almost 97% of youth aged 12 years or above.
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