ICMR: Delta was the predominant Covid variant among children?
A study conducted by ICMR(Indian Council of Medical Research) has revealed that during the second wave of the corona, more than half of the children have been infected with the delta variant. This study has been done from march 2020 to june 2021, in these 8 states (Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, and Chandigarh) have been included. The analysis included 583 samples of children up to 18 years of age.
Among these samples 52% were children between the ages of 13 and 19, 41% were between the ages of 3 and 12 and 7% were under 3 years of age, out of a total of 583 children 37% were such children in whom symptoms of coronavirus were seen. At the same time, 15% of the children needed to go to the hospital and all these children were Covid-19 positive. Out of a total of 583 samples, 512 genome sequencing was done. Of these, variants of concern were found in 372, while variants of instant were found in 51 samples. Other variants were also found in 89 samples. The delta variant was found in 66% of the children sampled, the kappa variant was found in 9%, the alpha variant was found in 7% and the beta variant was found in about 5% of the samples.
