Omicron or Delta: Which Covid variant causes more infections among children? experts answer
Premium- Most children show symptoms like fever, cough, runny nose and sore throat
During the second wave, most children who were found to be COVID positive were infected with the Delta variant. And, most of them showed symptoms like fever, cough, runny nose and sore throat, a new study revealed.
Samples of 583 COVID-infected children were studied between March and June 2021, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) scientists said that revealed, "Out of 512 sequences, 372 were VOCs (variants of concern), 51 were VOIs (variants of interest). The most common lineages observed were Delta, followed by Kappa, Alpha and B.1.36, seen in 65.82%, 9.96%, 6.83% and 4.68%, respectively in the study population."
"More than half of the patients (51.8%) belonged to the age group of 13-19 years, 41.2% to 3- 12 years and the rest 7% to less than 3 years," the study further informed. The study was conducted for children between 0 and 18 years.
It added that the symptoms were reported among 37.2% of patients and 14.8% reported to be hospitalized. Most of the common symptoms include fever, cough, runny nose and sore throat.
India's fourth serosurvey that was carried out during the first half of 2021 showed that about 50 per cent of the surveyed children had antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the study also showed.
The ICMR study also highlighted the Delta lineage predominated in Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana whereas the Kappa variant was observed in Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Chandigarh.
Researchers, however, emphasized the need for continuous genomic surveillance even amongst children infected with COVID-19.
The study, a preprint uploaded on medRxiv, analysed paediatric samples collected between March and June 2021.
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