A third COVID-19 could peak in India in October, the National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) has warned, while calling for immediate steps to deal with its impact. The NIDM in its latest report to the Prime Minister’s Office quoted an opinion survey of 40 experts by Reuters that forecast that the third wave is likely to hit India between July 15 and October 13. The report also cited three likely scenarios for the third wave predicted by IIT Kanpur based on the level of unlocking.

Will The Third COVID-19 Wave Impact Children?

While many health experts had initially raised concerns about children being affected more adversely than adults, the NIDM report said recent scientific data suggested otherwise. The Indian Academy of Paediatrics found that there is no biological evidence that the current and the new Delta Plus variant will affect children more disproportionately than adults.The Lancet COVID-19 Commission India Task Force has drawn a similar conclusion about the third wave’s possible impact on children.

“A serological survey (March 15-June 10, 2021 from over 45,000 samples across 4 states) by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) suggests that the hypothesis of a future wave specifically targeting children (two years and above) is unfounded,” the report said. The AIIMS study noted a serological prevalence of 55.7% in ages 2-17 years and 63.5% among adults, clearly determining “that there was a statistical difference in prevalence between adults and children.”

‘Vaccinate Children But With Caution’

But, the report said, the lack of vaccination among the below-18 age group should be a “cause for worry if not panic” as existing pediatric health care facilities are not “robust enough” to treat children on a large scale. It has stressed special programmes and policies for different groups of children and consideration of indirect impacts of the pandemic on children. While terming vaccination among young children and children with comorbidities “an immediate future priority,” NIDM has said the exercise needs to carried out with a lot of caution. “There needs to be solid peer-reviewed clinical data before vaccinating children against COVID with the vaccines that have been given Emergency Use Authorisation,” it said. Teachers and school staff must be also vaccinated besides ramping up response for rural India.

Though evidence was lacking to designate the Delta Plus variant as more dangerous than Delta, the former had been detected in 70 cases across 16 states from the 58,240 samples that have been sequenced so far in India as of August 2.