Third wave of Covid-19 will hit children in a big way: Virologist Dr V Ravi

Virologist Dr V Ravi has warned that the third wave of Covid-19 will hit children in a big way and it is time for both the Centre and state governments to chalk out strategies and gear up to handle the situation between October and December.

“The government should take some important policy decisions on what is their approach towards starting school the next academic year, considering that the next wave will affect children. Kids will also be more vulnerable because they are not vaccinated. Are we going to test them regularly for early detection like how the western countries do?” said Ravi.

Ravi, who is also the member of Karnataka’s Covid technical advisory committee, stressed on the need to ramp up medical infrastructure to treat Covid infected children. “We don’t have enough pediatric Covid care wards and intensive care units for children. This has to be urgently scaled up,” he said.


The virologist also suggested the government take some stern steps to prevent crowding of people even after the end of the second wave. “Some bold steps must be taken. Any form of political and religious gatherings should not be allowed. All superspreader events like weddings must be banned completely. We cannot go on in a full-scale prioritising livelihood and economies. We have to be extremely guarded,” he said.

To a query on what went wrong in managing the second wave of Covid-19, he said governments did not listen to technical experts. “The way India handled the first wave was commendable, but thereafter experts' warning of a harsher second wave was not taken seriously and it is partially the reason behind the situation we are in today. Covid cannot be handled well without scientific, data-driven interventions,” he said.

Ravi, who is also the nodal officer for genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 virus in Karnataka, said the double mutant variant (B.1.617) is rapidly spreading in communities. “At the end of March double mutant variant was detected in 5-10% of community samples, whereas it has now shot up to 45%. The other variant that is also quickly spreading in communities is the UK variant,” he said, adding that it should not be a concern for people as identifying mutants is just an academic exercise.

He predicted that the second wave will peak in Bengaluru in mid-May and then it may take four-six weeks for cases to decline. But, he said, cases will continue to surge in other districts after the second wave plateaus or declines in Bengaluru.