Though respiratory illnesses have been soaring amongst children, they are rarely tested for influenza that has the potential to turn serious
Though respiratory illnesses have been soaring amongst children, they are rarely tested for influenza that has the potential to turn serious
Continued preoccupation with COVID-19 and the concerns over new and emerging sub lineages of the Omicron virus variant of SARS CoV-2 seem to be taking attention away from the fact that an influenza epidemic is sweeping through the population, public health experts point out.
“Respiratory illnesses have been soaring amongst children with the easing of public health measures and because of the ‘immunity debt’ that they are experiencing now. During the pandemic, children had little exposure to the respiratory viruses that they might have normally encountered. All children are thus susceptible to new infections and in schools we now see entire classes falling sick,” says A. Santhosh Kumar, former Superintendent of SAT Hospital.
Similar symptoms
Most children and adults who turn up in hospitals with runny nose, sore throat and fever are invariably tested for COVID-19, but rarely for influenza. While the symptoms of influenza and COVID-19 may be similar — cough, runny nose, sore throat, fever, headache and fatigue — both are caused by different viruses.
There is a need to distinguish between COVID-19 and influenza because there are good anti-virals to tackle the Influenza virus and prevent complications, doctors say. Also, while annual flu vaccination is not something popular in the State, it can be beneficial in preventing serious complications in the elderly.
“It is strange that people seem to be worried about new variants of SARS CoV-2 which may not really have much clinical relevance. But they are not tested for influenza, which has the potential to turn serious and cause pneumonia, especially in the older population,” a public health expert says.
But with an unusually high number of children reporting with respiratory illnesses, which seem to abate after a wracking cough which lasts for over two weeks, paediatricians have begun to test for Influenza.
“It is quite intriguing because we find that almost all of the children below 12 years, whom we tried to protect against COVID-19, have very high levels of COVID-19 antibodies now even though they never had the clinical disease. With such high COVID-19 antibody levels in children, we thought that we might see many more MIS-C (multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children) cases . But that has not happened. It is possible that public health measures such as masking helped these children have a controlled exposure to COVID-19,” says Dr. Santhosh Kumar.
