Third Covid wave could put health of children at grave risk

As we have seen things spanning out from December 2019, the first wave impacted the elderly the most, followed by people aged 18 to 45 in the second wave. Looking at the trend as well as vaccine rollout, children below 18 years of age seem to be the ones who will get impacted the maximum by the third wave.

There are two possible reasons for it. Firstly, the virus seems to have found a way to evade the system to cause infection in children quite easily (due to mutation) and secondly, the delay in rollout of vaccine for both adults as well as children is going to cause more asymptomatic carriers and hence more denominators.

Coming to the impact, we might see more severe cases like severe pneumonia, multisystem inflammatory syndrome and diabetic ketoacidosis with significant morbidity and mortality among children.

The third wave of the virus will affect children of all ages, but has the potential to cause significant concern in infants and adolescents.

The major complications witnessed are severe pneumonia needing intubation, ventilation and other supportive care to type 1 diabetes to diabetic ketoacidosis. Expected complications are MISC that is usually seen 4 week after the dip in Covid cases.

Many doctors say that kids are acting as asymptomatic carriers of the Covid-19 virus. This could aggravate the situation during the third wave

With a decision pending about reopening of schools, toddlers and children, due to less severity or mild symptoms, will carry the disease to school and will become super spreaders and there is potential for the virus to mutate in schools which can be even more catastrophic.

Pfizer has begun vaccination for kids as young as 12 year old. If the government of India takes up similar programme to vaccinate kids, it can be an excellent solution for preventing spread among children aged between 12 and 18 years which account for approximately 15 percent. If the vaccine is approved for all age groups, i.e. from birth to 18 years at least 70 percent of the total 30 to 37 percent of total population has to be vaccinated to protect children.

As previously described, we are seeing the disease in more severe form this time around which might worsen with next wave. Making sure a paediatric Covid task force is set up, adequate infrastructure and manpower to handle the situation, if arises and not to forget, testing and contact tracing will go a long way in mitigating the ill effects of a potential 3rd wave.

(The author is Consultant- Paediatric Pulmonology, Aster CMI Hospital, Bengaluru)