Our final cohort included 145 patients with mild to moderate illness within 1 week of symptom onset. We compared 3 groups: young children younger than 5 years (n = 46), older children aged 5 to 17 years (n = 51), and adults aged 18 to 65 years (n = 48). We found similar median (interquartile range) CT values for older children (11.1 [6.3-15.7]) and adults (11.0 [6.9-17.5]). However, young children had significantly lower median (interquartile range) CT values (6.5 [4.8-12.0]), indicating that young children have equivalent or more viral nucleic acid in their upper respiratory tract compared with older children and adults (
Figure).
The observed differences in median CT values between young children and adults approximate a 10-fold to 100-fold greater amount of SARS-CoV-2 in the upper respiratory tract of young children.