Over 200 children in Rajasthan’s Dungarpur district test positive in 12 days | Jaipur News

Dungarpur collector Suresh Ola visits a Covid centre on Saturday

JAIPUR/UDAIPUR: The state child commission has written to Dungarpur district collector after it learnt that around 210 children and teenagers tested positive for Covid in the last 12 days.
According to the district collector, 56 of them are in the zero to 12 years age group, while the remaining are between 12 and 18 years. They contracted the infection from their Covid positive parents and are now recovering. The child panel has asked the administration to set up dedicated Covid wards for children and essential infrastructure for treatment.
Rajasthan State Commission for Protection of Child Rights chairperson Sangeeta Beniwal said, “Some media reports said over 500 children were infected with Covid in past two weeks in Dungrapur, but when I spoke to the district collector, he said the actual number was around 200. This number is also quite high and children are between 14-17 age group. I have asked the administration to set up dedicated Covid ward for children with adequate facilities. I have also asked them to send me a list of children who are infected. This has been asked from all districts as well.”
Meanwhile, the district administration officials claimed that the number of children getting infected has remained constant in the last three months. District collector Suresh Ola said, “I have seen the data of the number of children who were Covid positive in March, April and May, which shows that there has no been no drastic increase in the number. On an average, we get around 3-4 cases of children daily, but only one child has been admitted to a hospital in the last six months while the remaining have recovered at home. In last 12 days there were 56 children between 0-12 years who were covid positive while the remaining children were older” Ola visited the children’s ward at the district hospital on Saturday to take a detailed report .
According to guidelines apart from setting up of separate ward for Covid infected children, the district administration needs to ensure all children hospitals/wards have adequate facilities like ventilators, oxygen cylinders and medical staff. The state health department also said around 3% of the total patients are children.
A senior official said, “Around 3% of the cases, which are being reported, are children in the age group of 0-10 years. It has been observed that in the second wave, almost all family members get infected.”
However, Dungarpur CMHO Dr Rajesh Sharma said speculations on the third wave having affected children in the district are baseless. “ In over two weeks, only 60 children were found positive. All of them were asymptomatic and they were tested because of contact tracing. Either their parents or relatives had been positive and hence the children contracted the disease,” Sharma told TOI. He added that Dungarpur was the first district to begin campaigns for door-to-door screening and distribution of medical kits.