Children also become infected with SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, but have a very low risk of severe COVID-19 compared to adults. A team of scientists from the Berlin Institute of Health at the Charité (BIH), the Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the University Hospital in Leipzig and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg used single-cell analyses to find the cause of this. They were able to show that the child’s immune system is much more active in the upper respiratory tract than in adults and thus better equipped to fight the virus.