Identifying Covid-19 risk factors in South African children

Southampton researchers are to begin a new study that will give important insight into the risk factors for Covid-19 severity in children from low-income populations in South Africa.

The majority of research carried out during the pandemic has mainly focused on middle to high income settings, which has led to successful vaccination and public health programmes to combat Covid-19.

Working with researchers at the University of Cape Town, Professor John Holloway will analyse samples from 450 children who are part of the Drakenstein Child Health Study cohort in Cape Town to identify the major risk factors of the SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The study, funded by an NIHR Global Effort on COVID-19 (GECO) grant and also supported by a Global Partnership Award, aims to new information on disease spectrum, long-term outcome, the role of antibody testing, and identify new targets for treatment in children.

Professor Holloway said: “We are very proud to be starting this international study that will provide valuable information about Covid infections in children. This is a very different population to those that have been studied so far in the pandemic which mostly have been from resource rich settings.

“As well as providing data that can be used to develop targeted intervention, it will also support training of South African scientists in the bioinformatic methodologies needed to analyse genomic data.”