Save the children

The Lady Ridgeway Hospital (LRH), Sri Lanka’s main children’s hospital in Maradana, has run out of capacity to treat COVID-19 infected children, hospital authorities announced on Tuesday. According to LRH Director G. Wijesuriya, 70 children are being treated for the virus in the hospital’s COVID-19 ward. The hospital is recording 15 new infections in children daily.

With capacity reached in the COVID-19 ward at LRH, the hospital has started transferring patients to other hospitals for treatment. The Ministry of Health has granted permission for the LRH to lease premises in Rajagiriya to set up a special treatment facility. The move is praiseworthy. Every parent with a child sick from COVID-19 would want them treated by paediatric medical specialists at LRH.

But the revelation from LRH throws a new curveball into a burgeoning health crisis in the country. Data is emerging from all over the world that the Delta variant of COVID-19 is causing a spike in infections in children. For 18 months the saving grace through this pandemic was that for some reason the virus was less likely to infect younger children. With the Delta variant now the dominant strain across most parts of the world, this silver lining no longer appears to exist.

In New Orleans, Louisiana, where COVID-19 hospitalisations are surging, the Children’s Hospital is inundated with children admitted with severe COVID-related illnesses. Physician in Chief at the Children’s Hospital Dr. Mark Klein has called the Delta variant of COVID-19 “every infectious disease specialist’s and epidemiologists’ worst nightmare”. Of over 11,000 new COVID-19 cases in the State since the weekend, over 2,000 are children, according to the Louisiana Department of Health. As the Center for Disease Control in the US revises its guidance on facemasks as the Delta variant sweeps across several states, America’s top infectious disease expert Dr. Antony Fauci is urging people to treat the Delta Variant of COVID-19 as a different virus to the original strain.

The new science is bad news for Sri Lanka, as the country returns to semi-normalcy this week, while the Government believes it has finally turned a corner on vaccinations. But there is still every reason to adopt policies of caution and phased reopening, given the new and unique public health risks from the Delta variant. The World Health Organization believes that Sri Lanka is finally on track to reach a key milestone of 10% of the population being fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by September 2021. Yet up to 75% of the population must be fully vaccinated for the country to reach herd immunity against COVID-19. With new data emerging that shows incidence of breakthrough infections – where vaccinated people infected with COVID-19 can transmit the deadly Delta variant to others, even if herd immunity were possible in the short-term, it might not be enough to prevent the loss of life.

All the more reason then for the Government to put public health – and the safety and health of the nation’s children in particular – at the very top of its priority list. While there is reason to worry about the country’s economic situation, the Government must bear in mind that there is no economy without people to run it. Nearly 5,000 people are already dead from the virus, mostly due to public health management failures. Stopping the spread of the Delta variant by imposing restrictions if necessary, including a limit on indoor gatherings and work from home mandates may be a bitter pill to swallow for a regime that wants nothing more than to put this pandemic behind it. But it may also be the only way to ensure that the deadly mutation does not prey on the country’s most vulnerable population.