The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said that children who were earlier thought to be better protected against coronavirus are now showing signs of being spreaders rather than super-spreaders.
“This has been seen in Mizoram, where the number of active COVID cases is small,” said ICMR Director General BalramBhargava on Tuesday.
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Among children below the age of 17 years, only 8 per cent have been found to be COVID-19 positive, he added
“Below five years, the figure would probably be less than a per cent but then we can come back with a figure for this,” he said.
In response to a question over Kawasaki disease and its link with COVID-19, Bhargava said India so far has not reported any cases of Kawasaki disease among coronavirus patients.
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Kawasaki is an auto-immune disease that affects children who are less than five years of age and presents with fever, Thrombocytosis and a condition in which the arteries of the heart become dilated and aneurysm, he added.
“It is less common in India. I don’t think we have had any experience of Kawasaki with COVID-19 in India so far. That’s a very rare condition,’’ he said.
On Tuesday, the Union Health Ministry said that India has conducted more than 10 Crore COVID-19 tests and the recovery rate is more than 90 per cent.
“India’s number of cases per million population as well as deaths per million population are amongst the lowest in the world. It took us 57 days to register a recovery of 10 lakhs from 1 lakh whereas, the latest 10 lakh recoveries have been achieved in just 13 days which is also a satisfactory sign,” said Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary, Union Health Ministry.
While talking about the continuous declining trend in case fatality rate, he mentioned that it has declined from 1.77 per cent on September 1, 2020, to 1.50 per cent currently.