Did you find this answer helpful? Subscribe to keep up with all things Lifelong Learning.
Is it advisable for kids to be engaged in youth sports such as basketball or soccer at present, especially if it involves traveling regionally and playing against teams from other states?
At this time, there have been a number of alarming instances of outbreaks at summer camps for children and during early openings for K-12 schools. Meanwhile, we are increasingly recognizing that children may have minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic COVID infections, but they are easily transmissible. Therefore, contact sports are a risk for having continuing transmission of the virus, especially when traveling regionally or across state borders those infections will be carried into those other communities. Although these infections among children are generally mild, the concern is that ongoing community transmission will continue to feed into the risk for older adults, the immunocompromised, and other persons in the local community who are at high-risk of severe consequences to infection. Also, there is the rare risk of severe adverse effects with COVID infection among children—a severe condition called Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) can cause hospitalization and death.
