400 Children 10 days

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More children are getting infected by COVID-19 i the second wave than in the first wave in India. There was a 51 per cent rise in infection among children within a period of a month in the state of Maharashtra India. As many as 1,34,470 children as young as 10 years have been infected versus 88,827 on April 3, 2021. More than 75,387 children were infected within 25 days in the state.

400 children under the age of 10 have been infected by COVID-19 Mumbai India the last 10 days.

Over 470 children below the age of 10 have been infected with COVID-19, since the beginning of this month in Bengaluru, as the city is witnessing a spike in infections.

According to some experts, unlike in the past children are now vulnerable because they are more exposed to outdoor activities, functions and gatherings, as also schools reopening for a certain age group, which was not the case earlier due to lock downs. Along with the serious health impacts, UNICEF warns that children are facing a multitude of physical, mental, social and economic risks. UNICEF representative in India, Yasmin Ali Haque, says children are losing parents and caregivers to the virus. This is leaving many destitute and without anyone to care for them.

At least 706 government school teachers and other employees have died of coronavirus due to poll duties during the Uttar Pradesh panchayat elections, alleges the state-level teachers’ association. The minister of state for basic education, Satish Chandra Dwivedi reacted to the allegation of teachers’ deaths saying, “There’s no specific audit done by basic education department about the number of teachers’ death. It is wrong to say all those who were engaged in election duty died due to Covid. How do we know that teachers were not infected when they came for election duty? And how does anyone know that teachers, after returning from the election duty, got infected for some other reasons?” This response is typical of government officials to deflect and blame. The vaccine roll out has been deathly slow in India.

Children make up 22% of new U.S. COVID-19 Cases in the United States and account for about 3.1% of hospitalizations. As more and more adults continue to get their COVID-19 shots, infection rates are slowly falling. Dr. Grace Lee, a pediatric epidemiologist at Stanford Children’s Health said if vaccines are approved for children, those infection rates would also likely plummet.

COVID-19 Double Mutant

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A new COVID-19 variant known as “Double Mutant” is responsible for a surge in coronavirus cases in a a region of India that includes Mumbai. The existence of the newly discovered variant was first disclosed by India’s government on March 24, 2021. It is called a double mutant because it contains two mutations of the COVID-19 virus.

One day late, on March 25, 2021 one case of the Double Mutant was found in the San Francisco Bay area in California.

Dr. Benjamin Pinsky, a Stanford doctor, said, that this double mutation has a mutation in the spike protein which is found in the California variant and also a mutation that is found in the South African and Brazil variants.  “We do have some information on experiments on the individual mutations (California, Brazil, South African) suggesting that antibodies will be less able to neutralize this India variant.” Pinsky said. “So this rapid spread across the globe is pretty impressive, and also a bit concerning.”

The city of Manaus in Brazil was one of the hardest hit in the world with a conventional strain of the coronavirus, and it now there’s a lot of substantial reinfection with the new Brazilian variant, Dr. Stefano Bertozzi, professor of health policy and dean emeritus of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, said at a UC San Francisco forum last month.

Dr. Benjamin Pinsky said, “Vaccines may be slightly less effective in preventing moderate disease or moderate illness with this particular variant, but the vaccines are still very effective and people should get vaccinated as soon as possible.” “We don’t know how those two mutations behave when they’re paired together.”

The emergence of the new variant underscores how important it will be to quickly vaccinate as many people as possible. The only way to stop the proliferation of mutations is to stop the spread of the virus through vaccines. If you are vaccinated, the immunity produced is believed to be better than immunity produced by surviving COVID-19. If you are vaccinated an get infected by one of these new variants then the result wold be a mild to moderate illness, likely not ressulting in hospitalization or death.