Mercifully, Covid 19 spares children and young adults. The Washington Post reports that just 100 children and teenagers have succumbed to the virus, out of the 200000 who have died in the USA.
Mortality in India is considerably lower than the West because of its young population.
Some of the reasons for less intense infection and substantially lower mortality in children could be fewer ACE2 receptors, lesser TMMPRS 2 receptors and greater quantity of interferon gama and interleukin 17.
Eli Lilly has reported efficacy of its monoclonal antibody, which reduced hospitalisation in patients of Covid 19. Full data is yet to be revealed.
RECOVERY is also assessing a monoclonal antibody in 2000 Covid patients in a randomised manner.
Sufficient levels of Vitamin D reduce the risk of worse clinical outcomes in patients of Covid 19, but the jury is still out.
Vitamin D is made by the ultraviolet rays of the sun interaction with human body, it therefore is prudent to spend time outdoors.
Almost all top Indian athletes have been found to be deficient in Vitamin D, this may be explained by lockdown.
An effective vaccine is still some months away, there is no guarantee that it will work in more than 50% people.
Also a vaccine is no magic bullet that would halt this pandemic in a day, unlike the script of a Bollywood or Hollywood production.
The number of true positives (RT-PCR) are less than or around 10% if we take into calculation the prevalence rate of 0.1% and false positivity at 0.8%.
Hence if 4000 people are infected in single day in Delhi. true positives would be 400 approximately.
References:-
1) Immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection in hospitalized pediatric and adult patients
Cite as: C. A Pierce et al., Sci. Transl. Med. 10.1126/scitranslmed.abd5487 (2020).
Science Translational Medicine
2) Imbalanced Host Response to SARS-CoV-2 Drives Development of COVID-19
3)The Major Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States
n engl j med 379;25 nejm.org December 20, 2018
4)Triple combination of interferon beta-1b, lopinavir–ritonavir, and ribavirin in the treatment of patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19: an open-label, randomised, phase 2 trial
Published Online The Lancet
May 8, 2020 S0140-6736(20)31042-4
5)Early Covid Treatments Could Be ‘Bridge’ to Vaccine, Fauci Says
Bloomberg.27 September 2020, 04:43 GMT+5:30
6) Lilly’s Covid-19 antibody helps some patients rid their systems of virus sooner in early analysis
STAT.SEPTEMBER 16, 2020
7 )Reduced development of COVID-19 in children reveals molecular checkpoints gating pathogenesis illuminating potential therapeutics
PNAS. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2012358117
8) Child deaths tied to covid-19 remain remarkably low, months into U.S. pandemic
By Lenny Bernstein
September 25, 2020 at 5:30 p.m. GMT+5:30,Washington Post