Kolkata:‘Kids getting Covid pneumonia but with high recovery rate’

Kolkata: A newborn who developed severe Covid pneumonia hours after birth and battled the infection for 23 days has now been reunited with his parents post recovery.

Doctors said that even as they came across higher number of severe Covid cases this time, it was not very usual for a neonate to develop that kind of pneumonia. This newborn had to be under ventilation for 14 days and had to be treated with steroid.

Prabhas Prasun Giri, associate professor of paediatrics at Institute of Child Health, said despite few children getting severe disease the recovery has been remarkable. “Recovery rate among kids has been excellent in our hospital which has been above 99%,” said Giri.

“Few neonates might develop severe Covid pneumonia but only after a week or later after birth but it’s not very common to get it right after birth,” said Dinesh Munian, in-charge of the NICU at Medical College Hospital Kolkata (MCHK).

Paediatrics professor at MCHK Mihir Sarkar said among infected children, infants below one year of age are at higher risk of ICU admission. Sarkar cited congenital issues like heart disease, neurological and metabolic disorders make infants all the more vulnerable.

Susmita Ghosh and Sourav Dhar were over the moon on becoming parents on January 12. But their bundle of joy developed breathing distress about seven hours after birth at Sagore Dutta Hospital. Dhar signed the risk bond to shift the baby to RG Kar where doctors suspected heart issues.

“On hearing about the probable heart problems we shifted the baby to Narayana Superspecialty Hospital (NSH) in Howrah at my mother’s insistence,” said Dhar.

At the Howrah hospital doctors found the newborn had dangerously low oxygen saturation. He was put on ventilator under the care of paediatric intensivist Subhadeep Das. The Echo showed no heart problem. But chest X ray detected severe pneumonia. Even as doctors initially suspected congenital pneumonia, the neonate tested positive to RT-PCR conducted.

The boy was discharged on Saturday. But the recovery was stormy as the baby had to put back on ventilation on three occasions when Das’s team tried to put him off the ventilation.

“We had a child with sudden hearing loss and another with nephrotic syndrome. But all kids recovered,” said Sumita Saha, paediatrician at Fortis Hospital.