Govt prioritizes children amid possibility of third wave of Covid

A national expert group, set up to look into the issues pertaining to Covid infection among children has framed a new set of guidelines.

New Delhi: Bracing for the third wave of Covid, children have been emphasized as per eminent health experts' warning. A national expert group has come up with a new set of guidelines to tackle the situation.

“A national expert group set up to look into the issues pertaining to Covid infection among children, have submitted new guidelines and we are closely looking into it. Maybe in the next 1-2 days, we will release the guidelines,” said Dr VK Paul, chairman of National Task Force on Covid-19 in New Delhi on Tuesday.

Dr Paul who is also a member of Niti Aayog said that India is all set to meet necessary medical requirements whenever required.

“However, the situation has not turned serious as of now. In fact, most of the children remain asymptomatic. There is less need for hospitalization, although we are looking into the development scientifically,” said Dr Paul while addressing a press conference on India’s Covid-19 management scenario.

He said a small proportion of children need hospitalization. “As per our inputs 2-3 percent of the pediatric population may need to be hospitalized but we are prepared for it,” said Dr Paul. He added “there could also be a possibility that after 2-6 weeks of recovery, children may again have some symptoms like fever, bleeding tendency, breathlessness among others. These will be post Covid scenarios”

“We are also doing an audit to see what more needs to be done to handle the situation,” informed Dr Paul.

Referring to vaccinating children, he said that many foreign vaccines have been recommended, “but until and unless we don’t get scientific data, we can’t utilize this in our population.”

“We need to be cautious while unlocking the system. We have to ensure that 70 percent of our vulnerable population get the vaccine and there is less than 5 percent positivity rate,” said Dr Paul.

As many as 344 districts are reporting less than 5 percent case positivity presently across India.

Echoing the view, Dr Balram Bhargava, director at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said that lockdown is not a sustainable solution in our fight against Covid19. He added that lockdown can be eased. " But we have to ensure less than 5 percent positivity rate, need to ensure 70 percent vaccination of our vulnerable section of the society and we need community response as far as creating awareness is concerned,” said Dr Bhargava.

He said that with one crore vaccination per day from August, India aims to vaccinate the entire population by December.

“India is included amongst five countries across the globe which is producing vaccines for Covid-19. And we are confident that India will achieve the target of vaccinating the country’s entire population by December,” said Dr Bhargava.

Meanwhile, Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the health ministry said that India has been witnessing a continuous decrease in cases since the highest peak was reported on May 7. “Less than 2 lakh daily cases since May 28 and almost 69 percent decline in cases since the highest reported peak was recorded,” he said.

Between April 28 and May 4, more than 531 districts were reporting more than 100 daily new cases and it has come down to 295 districts from May 24 to June 30.

India also reported a consistent decline in active cases which presently stands at 18.95 lakhs active cases. A decrease in active cases by more than 18 lakhs was reported since the peak on May 10 (a decline of almost 50 percent). 30 States reported a decline in active cases since last week.

“1,27,777 more recoveries during last 24 hours vis a vis new case. As many as 32 States have recorded more recovery than reported daily cases today,” said Agarwal.

Recovery rate has been showing consistent increase since May 3 and currently stands at 92.1 percent, he said. “India also witnessed 2.7 times increase in the number of tests conducted across the country since February,” Agarwal added.

Referring to the supply of vaccines in the month of May, Agarwal said that the Centre has supplied 4,03,49,830 doses of both Covaxin and Covishield to States free of costs, whereas 2,66,50,500 doses were directly procured by States, 1,24,54,760 doses have been directly procured by private hospitals taking the overall procurement of vaccines in May up to 7,94,55,090 doses.

“6,10,57,003 people were also vaccinated in May,” said Agarwal.