Why common colds might spike when kids return to school

In a Hong Kong study which was based on school going students who returned to classrooms after a long hiatus, researchers found that there was a seven times-fold larger outbreak of cold than in previous years.

Their findings point to children being more susceptible to cold and ,more importantly, adults contracting the cold primarily from children. Over the school period, cold viruses spiked in adults over the following two weeks.

Some feel that the higher number of colds reported could also be attributed to people being paranoid in the age of COVID-19 and reporting the smallest sniffle or sneeze.

The more surprising finding is that children shouldn’t have contracted colds considering all the measures in effect in the world right now, researchers feel this could be signalling the ineffectiveness of COVID-19 protocol against rhinoviruses.

The higher cases of common cold could also be due to children staying home for almost a year and missing out on immune development, which naturally makes them susceptible to catching the cold.