Coronavirus complications rare in kids

HYDERABAD: About 3.4 to five per cent of Covid-19 patients are paediatric cases below the age of 12, which translates to about 2,500-2,900 children. However, hospitals such as Niloufer and a couple of other private ones engaged in Covid-19 treatment exclusively for children contend that not even five per cent of these 2,500-2,900 required hospitalisation.

For instance, at Niloufer, hardly 75 to 100 children tested positive for the novel Coronavirus and were hospitalised in the last four months of the pandemic. “Covid-19 is not affecting many children and even if it did, hospitalisation was not seen in a majority of the cases,” Dr Lakshmi Vedprakash, consultant neonatologist and pediatrician at Rainbow Hospitals, Kondapur, said. Currently, Rainbow Hospitals is treating about 13 children for the disease, while Little Stars Hospital, another children’s facility, is treating eight.

However, an overwhelming majority are recovering with home care. “At Niloufer, we have seen just 75 to 100 positive cases in the last four months, even though there are about 10 admissions of pneumonia-like cases in the inpatient block. We have a separate building for these cases and are well-equipped to handle them. Pneumonia is a common respiratory disease among children. We are equipped to handle a large influx in July to October,” Dr B Narahari, associate professor, pediatrics, said. He explained that at any given point 50 paediatric cases are admitted in Niloufer, however, very few test positive for Covid-19 and 10 get discharged after recovery.

One of the reasons very few children need hospitalisation is that their bodies are wired differently, which helps them fight the disease better. “Some theories suggest that children do not have the A2 receptor, which is what SARS-CoV-2 needs to spread to the lower respiratory tract. In children, this is not developed, so the infection is largely in the upper respiratory tract,” Dr Lakshmi said.

But this cannot be taken lightly, she warned. “If the adult population is infected in two weeks, a surge in paediatric cases will be seen, because children are getting infected from adults at home. Children with fever must be monitored by a doctor over tele-consultation because they may not always be able to express their distress as effectively as adults,” she said.

A pulse oximeter would be useful to track this or one can manually track the child’s breathing patterns — in children under one, breathing rate of 70-80 can be abnormal, whereas for five-year-olds, a rate of 30 must set off an alarm, even if the child fails to express any distress. An adult takes 12-20 breaths a minute.