This year, the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed the lives of several children, especially in the months of March and April.
According to reports, the proportion of kids in need of hospitalisation and critical care, too, increased at tertiary care hospitals compared with the previous year. In a report by Times of India, in B Y L Nair Hospital in Mumbai Central, a referral centre for Covid-positive mothers and babies, there have been four deaths till April 30 out of 43 admissions. The hospital had seen four fatalities in all of 2020. Three of the four deaths were in infants while the fourth was an 11-year-old. Only one of them had an underlying health condition while a nine-month-old baby died after developing paediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome (PIMS).
Meanwhile, the second wave of the coronavirus claimed five paediatric lives at Parel’s Wadia Hospital between March and April this year as compared to three deaths in 2020. The hospital saw 76 admissions during the first peak in May-June 2020 as against 103 in March-April this year.
On the other hand, out of the six lakhs cases detected in March, 15,500 were children up to the age of 10 years of age. However, when one looks at this data along with the adolescent in the age bracket of 11 to 20 years, it was found that the virus had impacted about 55,000 people in these age groups. Together, they account for 10 per cent of the total positive cases.
Experts suggest that the cases had increased exponentially in the past six weeks, especially in high-rises. Along with adults, many children are testing positive. Parents are getting infected from their offices, markets and social gatherings, and passing on the virus to their children.
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