© Sam Balye/Unsplash
Illustration image shows children receiving instruction at a school.
Five times more children and young people committed suicide than died of
COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic in the United Kingdom, according to a study, which also concluded that lockdowns are more detrimental to children's health than the virus itself.
Researchers with the University College London, the University of York, the University of Liverpool, and the University of Bristol found in a study (
pdf) that has not yet been peer-reviewed that the
CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, otherwise known as the coronavirus, doesn't appear to present a significant
risk to children as compared with other age groups.
The study concluded,
"The risk of removal of CYP (children and young people) from their normal activities across education and social events may prove a greater risk than that of SARS-CoV-2 itself." SARS-CoV-2 is another name for the CCP virus.
It was revealed in the study that only 25 children under the age of 18 died of COVID-19 from the start of the pandemic until the end of February 2021. Around 61 children in all died after testing positive, but in 36 cases it was found the virus "did not contribute to their death."
But during the same time period, there were 124 suicides among children and 268 deaths from trauma, the study authors found, while noting the virus is "rarely fatal" for children.
Comment: See also: