Road-map to Child COVID-19 Vaccination in India

Abstract

Novel Corona Virus, causing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in human, has spread rapidly around the globe since 2019. Though the face of this pandemic (Declared by WHO on 11th March, 2020) mostly are the adults, children of all ages are also susceptible to COVID-19 infection and can manifest severe symptoms.[1] Though majority of COVID-19 cases in children are mild or asymptomatic, like 18.4/100,000 children of  0–4 years of age and 10.6/100,000 children of 5–17 years of age required hospitalization ,[2] of which one-third required intensive care.[3] Presence of risk features like co-morbidities, early neonate, late adolescence and obesity enhance the chance of intensive care admission among children.[4] S. Bhopal et al has stated in their study, by collating the data of child death due to COVID from all seven heavily affected countries, that only 0.03% of children had died from COVID infection, which is far less than all the other causes of child death (Unintentional injury, Lower Respiratory Tract Infection related deaths etc.).[5] Despite this fact, life of every child is important to us, so vaccinating them against novel corona virus disease can mitigate the adverse health events among them. Other benefits of vaccinating children are to curtail the transmission of corona virus (British children aged from two to around twelve are given nasal spray for flu, largely to protect their grandparents)[6] and also to envisage the negative social impact of COVID upon them.