New Delhi, July 5: The deadlier second wave in 2021 has left parents looking for information on protecting their children and the steps to take if their child, or a family member, has symptoms of Covid-19, or tests positive. Because once one person has got infected, virtually all members of the family have been infected this time around, suggesting high infectivity.
As the virus continues to evolve, as a practicing pediatrician, I am seeing 20 to 30 positive kids per week — with symptoms like cough, fever or chills, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, muscle or body ache, sore throat. These symptoms are very similar to adults and often confused with seasonal flu which used to be very common around this time of the year. But do we realize that all this is an indication of the third wave is not waiting to happen? It is already here. Unlike the first wave, now entire households are becoming infected with the virus and is likely to impact children too.
Can children get Covid-19 INFECTION?
In the first wave, we all said that Covid-19 doesn’t infect children because they have less of ACE2 receptors in their lungs, but this, it is important for parents to know, it is possible for anyone, of any age, to contract Covid-19 — including children. If anyone can predict pandemic, we wouldn’t have had a pandemic. Also pandemic behaviour and mutations of the virus is left to anyone’s imagination. Generally speaking pandemics in the past have lasted for close…
