Nagpur: Ten out of 50 children in 12-18 age group who were selected after tough scrutiny for the paediatric trial of Covaxin were found positive in antibody tests conducted hours before their vaccination.
Though the sample size is very small, the high seropositivity rate indicates many children in the city might have developed the disease and recovered without experiencing any symptom.
“This is an interesting indicator and needs to be studied further,” said Dr Vasant Khalatkar, principal investigator of the Covaxin paediatric trial underway at Nagpur’s Meditrina Institute of Medical Sciences.
“We were surprised to find 10 teenagers out of 50 already having antibodies.
That too when they were specifically selected through tough exclusion criteria,” said Dr Khalatkar.
None of them had ever experienced any symptom of Covid-19.
They had never stayed with a Covid-19 positive family member or elder in the last one year.
“Yet, 20% of them had Covid-19 sometime in last one year without even realizing it.
There could be many such children.
Some might have experienced symptoms but did not get tested.
We can say a considerable population in the 12-18 age group may have Covid-19 antibodies,” said Dr Sameer Paltewar, director of the Meditrina Institute.
Infectious disease specialist Dr Nitin Shinde said children must have got infection from some adult.
“Children are always collateral transmission.
There must be somebody who was positive in or around their family.
Children generally don’t transmit amongst themselves,” he said.
The only serosurvey of Nagpur district was conducted in October 2020.
Children were not included in it.
The district thus doesn’t have specific seropositivity data about children.
It’s a well-established fact that kids under 10 are largely safe as they don’t have enough viral receptors to take the disease to a serious level.
Now, with a considerable population of kids having antibodies, we can conclude that they will largely be safe, even if the projected third wave materializes.
Experts agree, but have asked for further studies.
“The sample is very small.
But the result is definitely worth studying.
We can start a serosurvey of the paediatric population on this basis,” said epidemiologist Dr Anand Thatte.
Doctors also said the danger of third wave and potential threat to the children can be reduced if the vaccine is made available to them and adults eligible for vaccination are immunized on a war footing in the next two months.Analysis of early trend in the city * Near 20% of teenagers from 12-18 age groups may have Covid-19 antibodies* Means, they would be safe from Covid-19 in case the third wave comes * Children in 0-10 age group have limited chance of serious/critical disease even if infected* If a vaccine for 12-18 comes in the next few days, kids may even start going to schools