Kalawati Saran Hospital surveying 3K children to look into effects of Covid

New Delhi: Kalawati Saran Children's Hospital will conduct a survey on 3,000 children to see how many of them came up with respiratory and non-respiratory symptoms, among other things, after being infected with the novel Coronavirus.

The survey, which is being conducted at the moment will cater to different categories of children to get a concrete picture of COVID-19 among kids. Dr Virendra Kumar, Head of Department Pediatrics at the hospital said that the data will be published soon.

"We are going to publish our data soon where we will reveal how many COVID-19 positive children were with respiratory symptoms, how many were with non-respiratory symptoms, including children who were admitted to non-COVID wards, how many of them tested positive," he said.

Dr Kumar also said that they will be surveying children who were admitted to their hospital in suspected areas, among them, how many of them tested positive. "We have screened almost 2,500 to 3,000 children for this survey. We had developed our system in such a way that any child coming to the hospital will be screened first. So, in screening whoever had flu-like symptoms, they will go in flu-OPD and others will go in routine OPD. Now, children from both the OPD were getting admitted," Dr Kumar explained.

This will be one of the largest surveys to be conducted on children who had caught the virus. According to doctors, children who got COVID-19 were mostly mild or asymptomatic; this is why there is no concrete data. "Children have mostly got a very mild form of the virus. However, the baby can transmit to healthcare workers. When babies were being brought for check-ups, healthcare workers were more vulnerable to it, because patients who were admitted were already maintaining social distancing," Dr Rajni Sharma, Assistant Professor, Pediatrics at All India Institute of Medical Sciences said.