Children unlikely to be hit in third wave

HYDERABAD: Amidst concerns that children may be hit hard in case of a third wave of Covid-19, health experts allays the fears saying that children will not be the main target of the pandemic virus.
This is because children, who had very low seropositivity in the initial phase of the first wave of Covid-19 during June-August 2020, had developed antibodies during the late phase of first wave (January-February 2021) and the second wave (since March-April 2021), said experts.
In fact,children were the silent spreaders of the pandemic virus within households before the schools were closed down in the wake of the second wave. Most of the children were asymptomatic and thus developed seropositivity for the pandemic virus. This, in other words, means they are unlikely to be the target of Covid-19 in the assumed third wave.
A WHO-sponsored research study in the country covering seropositivity in children has found that almost one in two children below the age of 18 years had exposure to the pandemic virus with or without experiencing any symptoms.
The assumption that children will be affected during the third wave, if any, was based on the fact that only a small percentage of children had seropositivity during the first wave. It was less than 10%. But as the schools reopened during July-August 2020, more children tested positive and the percentage of children carrying antibodies increased considerably. The WHO unity seroprevalence study now put the seropositivity in Indian children at 55.7% for those below 18 years of age and 63.5% for those above 18 years.
Official data in Telangana shows that about 13% of the Covid-19 patients in the state during the second wave are people below 20 years. This does not include asymptomatic cases. Researchers from All India Institute of Medical Sciences and other research bodies were also part of the study published in MedRxiv.