Patients gasping for breath, relatives desperately looking for hospital beds and oxygen cylinders – these are some of the images that come to our mind when we think of the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic.
Even as the country grapples with the steady spike in the number and severity of infections, senior paediatric experts and health consultants feel the third wave could turn serious for children, unless infrastructure is ramped up and adequate caution put in place.
Paediatric task force
According to health experts, paediatric task force should be set up at the State and district-level to take necessary precautions so that the country does not cut a sorry face this time around. Citing some recent reports, Rupak Barua, CEO, AMRI Group and head of the CII subcommittee on healthcare, said that more than 2,200 children under the age of five have died since the start of the pandemic globally. Brazil alone registered deaths of close to 832 children under the age of five since the start of the pandemic.
First wave
The first wave saw those primarily in the age group of 55-60 years and above getting affected, and deaths were also reported more in this age group for people with co-morbidities. While in the second wavepeople in the age group of 30-50 have been getting affected more, there has also been a spurt in infection among children, though they have been mostly asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic so far. Only 2-3 per cent of children below the age of 18 have been severely affected requiring hospitalisation so far; however, the situation might change if infections witness a spike.
“There has been an increase in infection among children in the second wave and given the fact that this particular mutant is far more contagious, we feel that children might end up getting more affected in the third wave, particularly because there is no vaccination yet available for children,” Vijayarathna Venkataraman, CEO, Motherhood Hospitals, told BusinessLine . According to industry experts, currently only around 5-10 per cent of the total beds in a hospital is dedicated for children, since they usually do not require hospitalisation and a majority of their treatment is done on outpatient basis.
The government should take immediate action and give clear guidelines to create paediatric infrastructure across private and government hospitals, said Barua.
Maharashtra has set up a nine-member paediatric task force while some of the other States are also mulling this possibility.
“We have got enough lessons from the second wave; there was a huge demand for critical care beds, ventilators and ECMO, and we could not provide all those because we were not ready to handle so many critical care patients. It should not happen that there is suddenly a demand (for medicines for children in third wave) and we are unable to meet this,” he said. Some of the existing Covid care centres, which have been established in the second wave, can be ramped up by creating child-focussed facilities to meet a sudden surge in numbers.
Watch out for symptoms
Though infected children usually do not develop any symptoms or are mildly symptomatic, some of them develop multi-system inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), a rare but serious complication associated with Covid-19.
It is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs.
“Given that small towns and villages are also getting affected now, we have to be very careful and watch out whenever a child develops any symptoms,” said Abhishek Poddar, Paediatric Interventionist, Apollo Gleneagles.