{"id":27987,"date":"2020-06-19T17:00:11","date_gmt":"2020-06-19T11:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/?p=27987"},"modified":"2020-06-19T17:00:11","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T11:30:11","slug":"more-than-17-covid-cases-in-kashmir-are-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=27987","title":{"rendered":"More than 17% Covid cases in Kashmir are children"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Srinagar<\/strong>: Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Friday said more than 17 percent of Covid-19 positive cases in Kashmir valley are children.<br \/>\n\u201cWe have higher percentage of children with Covid infection than the global average,\u201d said DAK President Dr Nisar ul Hassan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile children make up fewer than 2 percent of reported Covid-19 cases globally, in Kashmir valley 17.29 percent of Covid cases are in the age group of 0-19,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Nisar said based on our analysis from the data of 989 lab confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, 171 cases (17.29 percent) were under 19 years of age.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMajority of the children who tested positive for the novel virus had history of contact with adults,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost of the children with Covid infection had no symptoms or had mild disease,\u201d he added.<br \/>\nDr Nisar said no Covid infected child became seriously ill.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHowever, today we had the first infant death in the valley due to Covid infection. A 15-day-old infant who had underlying serious heart ailment died due to the novel virus,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Nisar said research shows that children are less susceptible to the virus than adults.<br \/>\n\u201cSchool closure and a comparatively lower rate of testing for the novel virus among children could contribute to the low number of reported cases among the group,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is also possible that due to some quirk of biology, children are less susceptible than adults,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Nisar said studies on whether children are also less likely to spread the infection to others have shown mixed results.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA French study found that a nine year old child who attended three different schools while showing symptoms of Covid-19 didn\u2019t infect anyone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut a German study concluded that children could be as infectious as adults,\u201d Dr Nisar said.<br \/>\n\u201cIn view of mixed results, we should wait for more research results before reopening schools and easing social distancing for children,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost children find it difficult to follow social distancing norms and given the large number of students in one classroom and crowded transport, schools can easily turn into infection clusters if children infect teachers or take the infection to the family and neighbourhood, even if they don\u2019t get severe disease themselves,\u201d said Dr Nisar said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Srinagar: Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Friday said more than 17 percent of Covid-19 positive cases in Kashmir valley are children. \u201cWe have higher percentage of children with Covid infection than the global average,\u201d said DAK President Dr Nisar ul Hassan. \u201cWhile children make up fewer than 2 percent of reported Covid-19 cases globally, in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}