No Evidence Of Covid-19 Having 'Serious Infection' Among Children: AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria

"I don't think we will have a serious infection in children in the future," AIIMS Director assures the public that Covid-19 will not be fatal for younger children.

Image: ANI

New Delhi: Dr Randeep Guleria, the director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi has said on Tuesday that he doesn't think that Covid-19 will have a serious impact on children. He said there was no evidence or data to support the claims of Covid-19 affecting children. 

The AIIMS chief was quoted by the news agency ANI. He said, "No data, global or Indian, has had any observations of children being affected more. Even in the 2nd wave kids who were infected had mild illness or co-morbidities. I don't think we will have a serious infection in children in the future."

The B.1.1.7 variant of Covid-19 was earlier reported to have affected children as well. Particularly in countries like Singapore. But as Dr. Guleria suggested, there is no official data available yet as to how many children in Singapore have been affected by the virus. Nonetheless, the B.1.1.7 variant has proven to be 60% more fatal than the original strain. 

Better immunity of the younger children is the reason stated by many experts for their improved survival rate. 

Meanwhile, the Covid-19 numbers have gone down in India. The number of daily cases was close to 86,000 on Monday.

The Government of India released revised guidelines for the national COVID vaccination program, to be implemented from June 21st onwards stating that the vaccination program is based on scientific & epidemiological evidence, WHO guidelines & global best practices.

According to the new guidelines, vaccine doses to be allocated to States/UTs based on population, disease burden & vaccination' progress.