Social distancing and the use of masks due to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis may have saved many, but it also weakened children’s immune systems, experts in England believe.
According to them, children haven’t had major encounters with the viral pathogens that cause the seasonal flu in the past 15 months. As a result, in the days following the pandemic, their bodies were unable to build an immune system to fight the bugs.
Virologists are also concerned about RSV, a virus that causes serious lung infections and sometimes death in children under one year of age. Also, there is no vaccine for it, The Guardian reported.
Experts said RSV hospitalized more children than any other seasonal bug in the days leading up to Covid. However, masks and social distancing kept children from contracting the disease during the pandemic.
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But with a return to normal, RSV can become more deadly. Children will get infected again because masks, social distancing, and other Covid-related protocols will eventually be phased out.
“The flu worries me, but there is a vaccine so the most vulnerable still have access to the vaccines,” said Dr. Catherine Moore, Consultant Clinical Scientist for Public Health Wales, as quoted in the news report.
According to the report, more than 30,000 babies and children under the age of five were hospitalized for RSV annually in the UK prior to the pandemic.
“We now have two cohorts of children who have never been exposed to the virus, so they are susceptible, but there are two years of it! We are preparing for a significant impact in pediatrics, ”said Moore.
William Irving, a professor of virology at the University of Nottingham, agreed, saying, “We didn’t see the flu last winter, so if it comes back this winter it may be particularly bad.”
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