Genomic and serological assessment of asymptomatic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections in child labor

ABSTRACT

Since working children have limited access to testing and monitoring for COVID-19, we decided to measure SARS-CoV-2 prevalence among them and compare it to non-working children. Our objective is to compare the frequency of SARS-CoV-2 genome and anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody among working and non-working children. Volunteer child labor studying at Defense of Child Labor and Street Children and randomly selected 5–18-year-old (same range as child labor group) unemployed children participated in this study. The groups, respectively, had 65 and 137 members. This is an analytical cross-sectional study that surveys molecular prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection by RT-PCR, and seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibody by ELISA in working and non-working children. The IBM SPSS statistics software version 25 was used for data analysis. The χ2 or Fisher’s exact test was used to analyze categorical dependent variables, for calculating odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals. Among the children enrolled in this study, molecular prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 turned out to be 18.5% in working children while it was 5.8% in unemployed children [aOR: 3.00 (CI95%: 1.00–7.00); P value: 0.003] and seroprevalence turned out to be 20% in working children vs 13.9% in non-working children [aOR: 1.000 (CI95%: 0.00–2.00); > P 0.001]. Equal SARS-CoV-2 viral load as adults and no symptoms or mild ones in children, coupled with working children’s strong presence in crowded areas and their higher rate of COVID-19 prevalence, make them a probable source for spread of the virus.

KEYWORDS:

• RT-PCR
• ELISA
• working children
• SARS-CoV-2
• COVID-19

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the volunteer children and their parents, the Defense of Child Labor and Street Children organization, and the Research Deputy of Tarbiat Modares University of Tehran for their financial support and aid. The results described in this manuscript were part of a student thesis. It was supported by the grant number Med-86143 from the Research Deputy of Tarbiat Modares University, Faculty of Medical Sciences. The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by Tarbiat Modares University, Faculty of Medical Sciences (grant number: Med-86143). We thank them for their financial support and for providing assistance.