Welcome to Thoughts in the Market.

I'm Andrew Sheets, Chief Cross Asset Strategist for Morgan Stanley Research.

And I'm Matthew Harrison, Equity Analyst covering biotechnology.

And on this special edition of the podcast, we're talking about kids and the coronavirus.

It's Thursday, August 19th at 3pm in London, and it's 10am in New York.

So Matt, as regular listeners probably know, you and I have had many, many conversations

on the path of COVID-19 over the last 18 months.

But today I wanted to focus on the impact on children.

This is a key question at the top of many people's minds for pretty obvious reasons, but

it's also really important for the economic outlook as any delays in school reopening could

impact how quickly people return to work.

So maybe let's start with the statistics and the numbers that we know.

What are you seeing in terms of children's case numbers and what does it tell us that's

different or maybe not different between the Delta variant and prior waves?

There have been about 4.4 million cases in children in the U.S.

That accounts for about 14% of the cumulative cases to date in the U.S.

In the recent weeks, you've seen that number above the long-term average somewhere between

18 and 22%, though I don't find it particularly surprising because we know a higher proportion

of adults are now vaccinated compared to children.

And so that obviously will lead to children becoming a higher portion of the cases.

And what do those statistics say about case severity, which I know is another concern.

As you mentioned, young children cannot yet get vaccinated.

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