Will Covid 3rd wave target children? Health Minister lists out opinion of top health experts

Ruling out extreme illness similar to that reported among adult and old patients, Dr Arora said that children may catch the Covid-19 infection but they will not get seriously ill.

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan in a statement has said that apprehensions regarding future waves of Coronavirus affecting children adversely have been put to rest several times by top health experts of the country and the country is prepared to battle the pandemic. Quoting health experts, Dr Harsh Vardhan said that Coronavirus traced among children has been found to be mild in nature and rarely requires hospitalisation and adequate provisions have also been made for treatment of the same. The minister also shared a press release issued by the Union Health Ministry quoting country’s top health experts on the probability of Covid-19 successive waves adversely affecting children.

The release mentioned Dr V K Paul, member NITI Aayog’s statement issued last month that health infrastructure has been beefed up to provide effective treatment to children who may get infected by the virus. Dr Paul had also said that the disease among children turned out to be asymptomatic and seldom needs hospitatised care. However, Dr Paul cautioned that a small percentage of affected children might be in the need of hospitalisation.

Echoing Dr Paul on the issue, Dr Randeep Guleria, Director, AIIMS, New Delhi had earlier said that there is no clinical data from any part of the world which concludes that children will be the prime target of Coronavirus in the subsequent waves of the pandemic. Dr Guleria also said that of the children who had already been infected during the initial two waves in the country, healthy children recovered quickly after exhibiting mild illness and only those with co-morbidity and low immunity needing hospitalised care.

On the vaccination front, clinical trials among children for vaccines have already commenced in the country. The release quoted Dr N K Arora, Chairperson of the COVID-19 Working Group of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) as saying that the clinical trials have started for the 2-18 age group and results of the same are expected by September-October. Ruling out extreme illness similar to that reported among adult and old patients, Dr Arora said that children may catch the Covid-19 infection but they will not get seriously ill.