More children are testing positive in the second wave of covid 19, some of them are silent spreader of infection to older people, and the majority were ending up on a ventilator.
increased number of children are tested positive compared to the previous year, and with increased complications. This has been a cause of worry for parents, who thought that their young ones are immune to the virus. But, experts say this was not the case. Though the positivity rate was extremely low, that was mainly because of children being asymptomatic.
“This has been a wrong perception. Children were never immune. They were asymptomatic. However, their caseload was relatively low, it is hard to speculate why at the moment,” Dr Sisir Paul, Director and Head of Department of Pediatrics, Madhukar Rainbow Children’s Hospital, Malviya Nagar, New Delhi, tells you.
Dr Pradeep Suryavanshi, a paediatrician at three different hospitals in the city, said, “Children are definitely acting as super spreaders. In this wave, we are seeing more children positive. At the three hospitals where I am consulting, there are at least 29 children who need intensive or critical care. We can see the impact on their brain and convulsions, which was not seen in the earlier wave. We have had three babies who tested positive for a rapid antigen test, which shows a high infection rate.”
Several data reported from a Chinese study of Covid-19 in children has confirmed that more than half of the children participated in the study showed mild symptoms of fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose, body aches and sneezing; while around a third showed signs of pneumonia, with frequent fever, a productive cough and wheeze but without the shortness of breath and difficulty breathing as seen in more severe cases.
“The only advice to the families is to stay back home and bring back the guard. Even for the older patients who have been vaccinated, we urge them to keep on following the precautions because vaccine alone won’t help. You have to be on optimum guard anyway,” Khilnani says.