NEW DELHI: There is no evidence to suggest that the next wave of Covid-19 will cause serious infection in children, AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria said underlining that 60-70% of kids who were hospitalised had co-morbidities while most others had mild disease and recovered at home.
“I don’t think we will have a serious infection in children in the future,” Dr Guleria said.
He said data collected from the first two waves showed that neither new variants nor the old ones caused severe infection in kids.
“No data, global or Indian, has had any observations of kids being affected more.
Even in the data from the second wave, most infected kids had mild illness.
Mostly those with co-morbidities required hospital admission,” he said.
“In many parts of the world where new waves are happening there’s no data to show children are being severely affected,” he added.
However, there is need to follow Covid-appropriate behaviour, including following hand hygiene, wearing masks and avoiding crowd, he said.
With the Centre pushing for preparedness of paediatric health infrastructure to be able to tackle any surge in cases of Covid among kids, hospitals across the country have started ramping up facilities for paediatric care.