Parents are conducting DIY nasal swab test for coronavirus in the US

It has been more than seven months into the pandemic and reports and studies conducted so far point out to the fact that the novel coronavirus behaves differently in children and adults. Children seem to have been largely spared from the severe consequences of the highly infectious contagion, as doctors and medical experts across the globe continue to evaluate its impact on kids.

Even though children are considered to be low-risk victims, a recent study has underlined that children between the age of 5 to 10 years carried a hundred times more genetic material of the novel coronavirus when compared to older children and adults.

As the US toys with the idea of reopening schools for the fall session (citing the lower transmission rate of coronavirus in school-going children), it has become all the more important to demystify how US kids and teens are affected by COVID-19. For starters, it is important to understand whether or not children can be the driving force of coronavirus transmission and how they can transmit the virus within their households or communities. This is precisely why six thousand US parents and their children are taking part in a DIY experiment to conduct COVID-19 tests at home.

For the DIY experiment, 6,000 volunteers from 11 US cities collect their own nasal swabs via the testing kits mailed to them by the organisers of the study. After collecting their specimens, these kits are sent back to the researchers. The volunteers also fill out questionnaires provided by the researchers and also update them about their symptoms through text messages.

According to a report published by Associated Press, the study is being conducted to understand how safe it is to open schools during the pandemic, giving the rapid rising in coronavirus cases in America. While parents are happy to do their bit in unravelling the mystery and filling the gaps when it comes to understanding the primary spreaders of the novel coronavirus, the result of the family study will only come out by the end of 2020. The study also aims to understand whether or not young children with asthma or allergies have inherent protection against the novel coronavirus.

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