Now this is an interesting and welcome development. One caveat: some of the data is questionable as it comes from China and the World Health Organization.

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As the novel coronavirus spreads around the globe, sickening more than 90,000 people and killing about 3,000, doctors have noticed something curious: Very few children have been diagnosed with it. And of those who have, most have had mild cases.

In China, where the outbreak started, children comprise just 2.4 percent of all reported cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, a World Health Organization-China Joint Mission report from last month found. Of those, only a sliver — 2.5 percent — experienced severe symptoms, and an even tinier proportion — 0.2 percent — became critically ill. Worldwide, there have been no deaths reported so far in young children.

The coronavirus' mercy on children is a relief and a mystery to pediatric infectious diseases experts, who have a handful of working theories but no definitive answers for why.

"This is one of the unusual findings and curveballs that this virus keeps throwing at us," said Dr. Frank Esper, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Cleveland Clinic Children's, whose research focuses on viral respiratory infections and newly recognized infectious diseases. "Normal coronaviruses seem to affect children and adults equally, but this one, for whatever reason, certainly skews more to the adult population."

The answer may lie in the difference between children's and adult's immune systems, said Dr. Vanessa Raabe, an assistant professor in pediatric and adult infectious diseases at NYU Langone. As people age, their immune systems weaken, she said, potentially making it harder for them to fight off illnesses.

"We've seen similar patterns for other diseases — chickenpox, for example. Adults who get it tend to get much more severe cases than children," she said.

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-...ocid=spartanntp