Experts: New Covid strain more dangerous for youth

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, April 13

The second wave is proving more disastrous and recent findings have made medical experts more concerned than before.

As positive cases are on the rise, doctors said new strain has got different characteristics and it’s affecting youngsters as well. They said they were seeing more infections in youngsters and children, unlike the first wave.

Senior Medical Officer AS Duggal said a high number of youngsters were being tested positive. “Even kids below the age of 10 and those below 30 years are getting infected,” he said.

Jalandhar Civil Surgeon Dr Balwant Singh said during the first wave, mostly elderly were affected, but this time, the virus has been proving fatal for youngsters as well. “Also, infection is spreading quickly and patients are getting serious at early stages,” he said.

Nawanshahr Civil Surgeon Dr Gurdeep Singh Kapur said the new strain was spreading rapidly and mortality rate was very high. “This time, we have seen children contracting the virus, which was not the case before,” the Civil Surgeon said.

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Notably, in Nawanshahr, a high number of school students had got infected.

Duggal said even after a year, people were not coming forward to get tested. “People are still adopting delaying tactics so that they don’t have to undergo testing. They still don’t accept that their symptoms might be related to Covid. Residents take medication by their own, which is not right. A person who is aged 30 and contracts the virus, but doesn’t gets tested becomes a carrier. Even if fever does not lasts morwe than three days, the persons will go out and spread the virus,” he said.

If every person who has fever gets tested, positivity rate would be much higher, said the doctors.

Apart from this, experts in the Health Department said there were still some inhibitions among people regarding vaccination. “They (people) still see if those getting vaccinated in their neighbourhood are safe or not and get inoculated after gaining a little confidence,” said a doctor.

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