Differences in lung physiology and immune function in children may explain why they are more often spared from severe illness associated with COVID-19 than adults, according to a research which sheds more light on the biological process behind the deadly infectious disease. Scientists, including those from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) in the US, said children under 18 years of age make up 22 per cent of the US population, but added that only about 1.7 per cent of the first 1,49,082 COVID-19 cases in the country belonged to this age group.

"These profoundly decreased rates of symptomatic infection, hospitalisation, and death, are well beyond statistical significance, require further examination, and may hold the key to identifying therapeutic agents," the researchers wrote in the American Journal of Physiology - Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology.