World Health Organisation (WHO) chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan on Saturday said children have been less severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and their chances of recovery are very good, even as she asserted that the Coronavirus is going to become the next respiratory virus.
She, however, said SARS-CoV2 virus may not disappear, but it is not going to cause the kind of impact and panic it caused over the last two years.
Participating in a virtual session on ‘Priorities after Pandemic; What Young India wants?’- Indian Student Parliament, Swaminathan said the reason why people talk about children being susceptible is because vaccination programmes today in most countries are targeting people above the age of 18 and elderly as they are the most vulnerable.
“When you do that, you are left with younger, and younger people who are unvaccinated. And, therefore, when you have the virus circulating in the community, those people are basically the susceptible population,” she said in response to a question.
In many countries, it is seen that by vaccinating older people, the infection pattern shifts to younger people. “I want to assure you that children on the whole have been less severely impacted by this pandemic. Not that they don’t get infected. Yes, they do get infected as adults but they don’t get severely ill. Clearly, it is an age-related correlation with the severity,” she said.
“Even if they get infected, the chances are that they recover very well,” the WHO chief scientist said. Swaminathan added that many countries have third, fourth and fifth waves and hoped that India will not have a third wave.