The Covid-19 Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) has recommended a special home isolation kit tailored specifically for Covid-positive children.
About 11,000 children are in home isolation within BBMP limits, while 35 are admitted to government quota hospital beds.
The kits are targeted at Covid-positive children weighing less than 50 kg and aged less than 12 years, while separate colour-coded kits are provided for infants aged 0-1 year. The kit will be coloured yellow with a picture of an infant and a dropper.
Kits intended for children between ages 1-12 will be green in colour and medicine with a spoon as the logo. Each kit will have an oximeter, a thermometer, a red flag signs card for parents, and five ORS packets.
The infant kit will have a bottle of paracetamol drops, a cetirizine bottle for cold and cough, and a multivitamin bottle. The older children’s kit will have the same except that there will be two bottles of paracetamol drops.
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Until now, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has distributed about 55,000 home isolation kits to adults and has more than 90,000 kits in stock.
Data on how many of these kits are for paediatric use is not available.
“We’ll mandate them,” Health Commissioner D Randeep said. “The chief minister is particular that the kits reach the patients. The kits are given only if caretakers monitor and administer the medicines. But the kits won’t be given only on a need basis.”
Randeep said an official circular would be issued on mandating the kits on January 19. “The clinical expert committee’s report came only a couple of days ago,” he added.
Kits for adults will cost Rs 77, kits for children below one year has been priced at Rs 75. For children aged between one and 12, the kits would cost Rs 84. This will not have a pulse oximeter since no decline in oxygen saturation has been observed in patients so far.
“We’re giving pediatric home isolation kits only to those who need it,” the BBMP Chief Health Officer, Dr A S Balasundar, said. “Almost everyone consults a doctor when their child gets sick. In slums, ASHA workers are checking children when they fall sick.”
Dr G V Basavaraj, professor of paediatrics at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health, who is the only paediatrician in the 17-member Omicron clinical expert committee, said paracetamol drops may not be much for urban parents, but they are precious for rural folks.
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