With the move of opening schools from 1st September in Delhi, not everyone is happy. It’s actually these children who are the most prone to the virus as none under the age of 18 are vaccinated yet.
“In the US, schools opened but even after vaccination, many children got infected. If you look at the history of what is going on in the US where schools reopened and also a large number of children have been vaccinated because vaccines became available soon. The Association of Paediatrics in the US says that the number of cases after the schools have reopened has gone up from 38,000 per week in July to 180,000 per week in August.”
Stating that India approved Zydus Cadila’s DNA vaccine for emergency use in adults and children, Medanta Chairman and Managing Director Dr. Naresh Trehan on Sunday cautioned against the reopening of schools and said that since the vaccine is around the corner, the government should wait for two three months till the children get vaccinated against Covid-19.
Soon vaccination would be started for children under 18 as well and Dr. Trehan feels that the opening of schools should not happen till at least 2-3 months and the government should wait till the children are vaccinated. Opening schools in a hurry would only cause a problem for the capital as there are not enough medical facilities yet which are available for children as of now.
“Is it that we should be patient for a few more months, till the vaccine arrives, and then kids can get vaccinated and go to schools? Or, is it that we are in a rush to open schools for what reason I don’t know? Extreme caution should be taken while deciding under what circumstances we should reopen schools,” the senior doctor said,
He feels that the population size of Delhi is too huge and opening all Delhi schools at once would expose children in lakhs to this deadly virus. Opening schools means eventually putting the kids in danger. If they’ve been studying from home for the past 16 months… then why not 2-3 months more.
“So even if people get one dose, we know that the protection goes up 30 percent to 50 percent.”
Even though it is not compulsory to attend school and the students would need their parents’ consent, still, most people feel that it is still not safe to expose their children. It’s not just the children who get caught by this virus but their families as well.
If a high number of children fall sick we don’t have the facilities in India, to actually take care of them. We don’t have, we are gearing up but we’re still a long way away from having good facilities because we don’t have enough doctors who are pediatrics, enough ICUs for children and ventilators, We are preparing and the government is trying to ramp up the availability of all the facilities as fast as possible.
It’s easy to make them sit and study at one place in the class, but about the time when they would have their lunch breaks? Not only that, a major issue that is being raised is that of the transportation of children. A lot of children traveled through public transport and even if they were in private transport, it is usually the buses. Maintaining safety precautions and social distancing would become an extremely difficult task at such places.
