Scientists from Kaiser Permanente found that adults with young kids at home may be less likely than others to develop severe COVID-19.
Children bring home colds from daycare and school and give them to their parents, and it’s thought those lower-level infections may ultimately defend Mom and Dad from the worst of COVID.
Both common colds and COVID-19 are coronaviruses, so the theory goes that getting one might offer some protection from the other.
The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was conducted by Dr. Matthew Solomon et al.
In the study, the team suggested that people that had a lot of common colds in the past few years may have some built-up immunity to cope with COVID-19, and then either not get an infection at all or get only a mild infection and not a severe one.
This study can’t prove that having a common cold protects you from severe COVID-19, only that it may confer some immunity.
The team scoured the medical records of more than 3 million adults seen at Kaiser Permanente Northern California from February 2019 through January 2021.
They found adults without kids who had COVID-19 were 49% more likely to be hospitalized and 76% more likely to stay in an intensive care unit than COVID patients who had children ages 5 and under.
The study was done before COVID vaccines were available, so the researchers can’t tell what effect vaccination might have on any possible immunity that colds may confer.
Also, the team says that just because you’ve caught colds from your kids doesn’t mean that either you or they won’t get COVID-19. Vaccination remains the best protection.
The best protection is getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and having your kids vaccinated, too.
If you care about COVID, please read studies about new oral drug that may prevent death from COVID-19, and these people need additional COVID-19 vaccine doses.
For more information about COVID, please see recent studies that older people have more COVID-19 antibodies, and results showing this drug could prevent severe COVID-19.
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