'States to get list of comorbidities to vaccinate adolescents soon'

Amidst reports of the Centre's decision to jab adolescent children between 12 years and 17 years suffering from heart ailments, kidney disease, immunodeficiencies and obesity first, before vaccinating healthy children, the state health department is yet to get a cumulative estimate on the number of children suffering from comorbidities.

Conforming this to DH, Dr N K Arora, chief of the National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group or NTAGI, said, "In a week or 10 days, an exhaustive list of comorbidities will be prepared, to be sent to the states. We will be concentrating on conditions that lead to severe infection and risk of severe disease in children".

"For example, heart attacks don't occur in children. There are diseases that are unique to childhood and associated with children like congenital heart problems."

"The exhaustive list will be science-based, based on Indian and global evidence. The effects of diabetes or hypertension in a child and an adult are different. We have set up an expert group and are looking at it. Shortly, we will communicate how the vaccine should be given to children with comorbidities," he added.

The government is expecting around four crore doses of Zydus Cadila's vaccine ZyCoV-D by December, which has a three-dose regimen.

In Karnataka, the key to finding children with comorbidities will be the recently launched Arogya Nandana scheme, where the state decided to screen 1.5 crore children for low immunity and comorbidities.

Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram officials said the drive has been on for a month now and a portion of the paediatric population has been screened.

As of March this year, there were 10,211 boys and 8,459 girls aged 0-17 years who were immunocompromised (suffering from HIV). There are 8,443 children suffering from various diseases in Haveri district alone and 132 obese kids in Udupi district.

Dr Rajath Athreya, consultant neonatologist, Kaveri Hospitals, Bengaluru, who is one of the two paediatricians on the State Covid-19 Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), said, "Children having HIV, post-chemotherapy, post-transplant patients, chronic kidney diseases, type-1 diabetes, and children with congenital heart disease, severe lung disease who are under specialists, will be easy to target for Covid vaccination."

"There are super-speciality hospitals like Kidwai, Nimhans, Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health, Jayadeva, and Institute of Nephrourology in Bengaluru, where adolescents suffering from cancer, cerebral palsy, heart ailments and kidney problems can be identified. But, in north Karnataka, it is difficult to identify such children," he said.

"The best way will be to approach district units of Indian Academy of Paediatrics and the paediatricians themselves for the list of children being treated under their care," he added.

Check out the latest DH videos here: