Cold-like symptoms causing virus has killed more than 100,000 children in 2019: Study

A new study, published in the prestigious medical journal Lancet says that a common virus that usually causes cold-like symptoms resulted in deaths of more than 100,000 children in the world in year 2019. These children were under the age of five.

This is the first such study that examined respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) disease burden in this age group. The study said that there were over 45,000 deaths in infants in 2019. These infants were under six months old. This age bracket accounted for one in five cases of RSV.

"RSV is the predominant cause of acute lower respiratory infection in young children and our updated estimates reveal that children six months and younger are particularly vulnerable,” said research co-author, Harish Nair, from the University of Edinburgh, UK. He was quoted by news agency PTI.

Add WION as a Preferred Source

This is "especially with cases surging as COVID-19 restrictions are easing around the world and majority of the young children born in the last 2 years have never been exposed to RSV (and therefore have no immunity against this virus)," Nair said.

Researchers feel that study with narrower age brackets in mind may help us decide which section of the population needs prioritised vaccination.

These include pregnant people, so that children in the youngest age groups can be protected, similarly to current strategies which offer vaccines for whooping cough, typhoid, and tetanus to pregnant people, they said.

Another study of this kind was carried out in 2015. The findings of the latest study are broadly consistent with the 2015 study.

The 2015 study had placed the number of annual cases of RSV in children up to five years old at 33.1 million, resulting in a total of 118,200 overall deaths, the researchers said.

However, these updated calculations of RSV mortality on global, regional, and national levels for the year 2019 include modelling data from over a hundred new studies, they said.

This allowed researchers to provide estimates for narrower age groups - including from 28 days to six months old, which is known to be the age range with the highest RSV fatality rate -- and community mortality rates, i.e., deaths that did not occur in a hospital.

Across the globe in 2019, there were 33 million RSV-associated acute lower respiratory infection episodes in children under five years old, leading to 3.6 million hospital admissions, 26,300 in-hospital deaths and 101,400 RSV-attributable deaths overall, the researchers said.

(With inputs from agencies)

WATCH WION LIVE HERE