Vaccinating children holds the key says DAK
By: Shayib Bhat VOV
Srinagar
The Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) in a statement has claimed that if the government is serious to flatten the curves of infection in future, they should make a comprehensive plan to vaccinate children.
This statement of the DAK has come close to the heels of recent statement by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kajriwal who has asked the government to stop the air travel to end from Singapore so that in the third wave of pandemic children are saved.
His statement has come among the media reports that the deadly variant of covid-19 has been found in Singapore which will infect children in future.
In fact many have predicted the third wave of pandemic through this variant of Singapore. In this backdrop the DAK statement has a lot of importance if the government is serious about saving children in future from this virus.
The Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Thursday said vaccinating children holds the key to avert third Covid-19 wave which is predicted to happen sometime in the fall of this year.
“Getting children vaccinated against Covid could prevent a third wave which is expected to affect kids the most,” said DAK President and influenza expert Dr Nisar ul Hassan.
‘The first wave of the pandemic affected the elderly, second wave is affecting the youth more and the third wave is expected to attack children,” he said.
Dr Hassan said if we vaccinate our children now, third wave may not happen,”
“Pfizer vaccine has been approved for use in children between 12 and 15 years of age. The vaccine is already given to people as young as 16. The vaccine has been found to be safe and 100 percent effective in preventing Covid-19 in children,” he said.
“We should import this vaccine and start vaccinating children,” Dr Hassan said.
“While Bharat Biotech has been permitted to test Covaxin in children, it has yet to start trials,” he said.
The DAK President said it is hard to defeat Covid-19 pandemic without vaccinating children.
“We won’t be able to achieve herd immunity until children are vaccinated,” he said.
“Herd immunity is achieved when most of the population in a community is immune to the disease so that the virus can no longer spread easily from person to person.”
He said in order to achieve herd immunity to Covid-19, more than 70 percent people need to be vaccinated.
That is unlikely to be achieved, if children who constitute a huge proportion of the population are unvaccinated.
There are around 4.8 million kids in Jammu and Kashmir who are unimmunized.
“And, if we leave a large number of the population unimmunized, we will continue to have fresh waves and pandemic will linger on,” Dr Nisar said.
“While most children who get Covid-19 infection develop mild illness, several hundreds have died of respiratory failure or an inflammatory syndrome,” he said.
“It is unjust to allow kids to take on great burdens during the pandemic but not give them the opportunity to benefit from a vaccine,” said Dr Nisar.
“A pediatric vaccine would not only help children, but it will be the basis of eventually eliminating Covid-19 in our population,” he added.
