Common Cold Gives Children Cross-Immunity Against COVID-19: Study

Common Cold Gives Children Cross-Immunity Against COVID-19: Study
Children pictured in a classroom at Waterview Primary School in Auckland, New Zealand, on July 4, 2018. Phil Walter/Getty Images
Bill Pan
Bill Pan
Reporter
|Updated:

Children’s exposure to the common cold can give them cross-immunity against the COVID-19 virus, a new study by European scientists suggests.

Since the pandemic, there have been many hypotheses to explain the well-documented phenomenon that young children are much less likely than adults to be harmed by COVID-19 infection. One of them proposes that the common cold, which most children get exposed to at least six times a year, generates memory T-cells that can cross-react and kill cells infected with COVID.

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