Slight rise in Covid cases among children in Bengaluru

The second wave may have officially plateaued, but paediatricians are reporting a slight increase in the percentage of child Covid-19 cases.

Official data says that roughly 4% of all new Covid-19 cases in Bengaluru since May 15 are pre-teens (aged 0-9).

This is up from 2.9% between March 12 and May 14. Over the last seven days, 171 pre-teen Covid cases were reported in Bengaluru every day, amid dwindling Covid-19 case numbers. In other districts, the number of pre-teen cases has been a steady 3%.

An increase in the cases of teens aged 11 to 18 is harder to gauge as government data also clumps 19-year-olds into this age bracket. Cases of the 11-19 age group, nevertheless, represent about 8% of daily cases being found statewide.

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“There are two reasons for these increased numbers,” said Dr Srikanta J T, Consultant - Paediatric Pulmonology, Aster CMI Hospital and member of the high-level committee of expert doctors constituted to deal with the predicted third wave of infections.

“One is a large number of referrals to Bengaluru from other districts, especially children from villages. The other reason is an influx of Multi Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) cases. Some MIS-C cases are children who had not previously been diagnosed with Covid, but were identified as having been Covid-positive by antibody tests. This adds them to the Covid tally,” he said.

Does the percentage rise in cases constitute the beginning of the third wave?

Experts are divided. Dr Basavaraj G V, Medical Superintendent and Professor of Paediatrics at Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health and member of the third wave committee, said that it is difficult to gauge if this rate increase constitutes the early beginnings of the third wave.

“Technically, a new wave should come three to six months from now as waves are catalyzed by viral mutations and the virus requires three to six months to mutate. However, we do not know if there has been mutation of the virus elsewhere, such as Maharashtra, which would prompt the third wave to set in earlier, like in August,” he said.

While this differs from the October to December timeline postulated earlier by experts, an August date for the third has also been predicted by a new SIR and Fractal Mathematical model developed by mathematicians in Tamil Nadu and Italy.

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According to one of the mathematicians, Assistant Professor A Gowrisankar, School of Advanced Sciences, Vellore Institute of Technology, the “third wave will start in the first week of August, will peak in September and end during October.”

He said the model, which uses fractal mathematics on “chaotic data,” had accurately predicted in April that the second surge would peak in mid-May.

No cause for worry

Dr Basavaraj said there is no evidence indicating that most children with Covid-19 infection will have severe disease in the third wave.

“Also, presently, we have all the infrastructure to treat paediatric cases. In the future, we do not know,” he added.