Why are children less likely than adults to spread COVID-19?

Small children often seem to be petri dishes of disease, rocking a perpetually runny nose and in the grip of a seemingly endless string of colds that they pass on to their classmates and family.

But as the pandemic played out this year, it became clear that this didn’t really appear to be the case for COVID-19.

On Wednesday, when announcing changes to visitor numbers in Greater Sydney, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said “children under 12 have been proven not to be carriers or transmitters of the disease”.

A NSW Health spokesperson clarified that “children under 12 are not included in visitor numbers as they are generally less likely to transmit the virus that causes COVID-19, both to other children and to adults outside their own…