No indication children will be affected in third COVID-19 wave: Health Ministry

Earlier, reports claimed that children will be most infected in the third COVID-19 wave. However, the Union Health Ministry said that this claim is not based on facts.

New Delhi: A steady decline in daily new COVID-19 cases has been observed since the last 17 days in India, the Union health ministry said on Monday. It said there has been a 2.6 times increase in the number of COVID tests done in the past 15 weeks in the country along with a steady dip in the weekly positivity rate reported in the last two weeks.

No indication that the children will be severely affected during COVID-19 third wave

Talking about the effect of the pandemic on children and young people, AIIMS, Delhi director Randeep Guleria noted, "Children suffered collateral damage due to mental stress, smartphone addiction and education challenges amid the ongoing pandemic." The ministry added that there is no indication as of now that children will be severely affected in the third wave of COVID-19.

India had registered 2,17,353 new infections on April 16. The active cases have further reduced to 27,20,716 comprising 10.17 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has improved to 88.69 per cent. 

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 2,37,28,011, while the case fatality rate has increased to 1.14 per cent, the data stated.

3.03 lakh deaths due to COVID-19 reported in India so far

India's COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16. It went past 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19. India crossed the grim milestone of 2 crore on May 4. According to the ICMR, 33,05,36,064 samples have been tested up to May 23 with 19,28,127 samples being tested on Sunday.

A total of 3,03,720 deaths have been reported so far in the country including 88,620 from Maharashtra, 25,282 from Karnataka, 23,202 from Delhi, 20,468 from Tamil Nadu, 19,209 from Uttar Pradesh, 14,364 from West Bengal, 13,281 from Punjab and 12,586 from Chhattisgarh.

The health ministry stressed that more than 70 per cent of the deaths occurred due to comorbidities.