COVID 3rd wave to attack Kids; How India may prepare for it?

Dr Ravi from Bengaluru, one of India’s best Virologists predicts that the third wave is likely to attack children predominantly.

• The Maharashtra government has created a task force to manage Covid-19 infected sick children during the third wave.
• I am not an epidemiologist, but common sense tells me they may be right.

Assumption:

• Any mutating virus intend to attack as many new host as a possible. Elderly and middle aged were more susceptible to attack in the First Wave. The Second wave attacked younger population. The Third Wave is likely to vulnerable for Children.

Facts:

• Unfortunately, children under the age of 18 are yet not vaccinated. As a result, the only host left for the virus to attack will be children, and we have 165 million of them who are less than 12 years old. Even if we assume that just 20% of them get infected and 5% of the infected need critical care, we need 1.65 lakh paediatric ICU beds. Today we are struggling with about 90,000 ICU beds for adults and less than 2,000 beds for children.
• Unlike adults, we cannot have a two-month-old baby in the Covid ICU without one of the parents. How do you send a young mother or father of three children to the Covid ICU without vaccination? Unlike infants and small children cannot be left in the ICU without their parents. That means we need to quickly vaccinate all the parents of young children with two doses. And this should happen now. We need to vaccinate at least 300 million young parents in the next few months.
• Sputnik V, I believe, has already tied up with four or five vaccine makers from India to manufacture their vaccine. Unlike in the past, we have options now. Any vaccine used on millions of patients anywhere in the world should be accepted without regulatory hurdles. What we need to do is to move quickly and get the deal done. Once the delivery date is confirmed, the health ministry should distribute 70% of the vaccines to the private sector and 30% to public hospitals to vaccinate 300 million young parents in just one month. This can be accomplished only with the active participation of the private sector, which has the flexibility to run services 24×7.
• Many hospitals are acutely short of nurses and doctors. It’s not uncommon for two nurses at night to manage an ICU filled with over 20 sick Covid patients on oxygen and ventilators. That cannot happen in a paediatric Covid ICU. Parents will insist on constant attention from nurses. If the family is not happy with the medical care, and God forbid something happens to the child, there will be serious consequences for the medical staff, which results in attrition. We need to prepare an army of young nurses and doctors on standby to move from one city to the other based on the Covid wave, to support busy hospitals. This cannot happen unless these doctors and nurses are given grace marks for various entrance and exit exams. Money will not motivate young doctors and nurses to work in a Covid ICU, risking their life.
• God has given us a window of opportunity, let’s make the best use of it and show the world what we are. I am optimistic that our government, under the able leadership of PM Modi, will address this crisis without any delay.