Health personnel conduct Covid-19 swab tests on two children. — Bernama photo
KUCHING (Aug 17): A total 832 cases of the Covid-19 cases recorded in Sarawak from Aug 1-12 this year were young children aged six and below, said State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) advisor Dato Sri Dr Sim Kui Hian.
In a Facebook post today, Dr Sim said this represented 10.7 per cent of the total number of Covid-19 cases during the same period.
He disclosed that those aged between seven and 12 years represented 773 or 9.94 per cent of the total cases, while the 13 to 17 years age group made up 673 or 8.65 per cent of cases.
“Children and teenagers may have mild severity but as Covid-19 is only 18 months old, there are still a lot of unknown factors when it comes to long Covid syndrome and paediatric inflammatory multi-system syndrome (PIMS),” said the Local Government and Housing Minister.
As such, he called on parents to educate their children with non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce the risk of Covid-19 infection.
These include wearing face masks when in public places, practising physical distancing, and avoiding social events, especially with the emergence of the Covid-19 Delta variant.
“Adults can transmit to children. Children can transmit to adults,” he added.
He also said the Sarawak government, State Education Department, and Health Ministry are finalising the vaccination rollout for children aged between 12 and 17, who comprise about 240,000 of the state’s population.
He pointed out this is being done as the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Authority (NPRA) has approved the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for those aged 12 and above.
He added the implementation would likely be in two stages with those aged between 15 and 17 to be inoculated soon.
“Vaccination has proven (if you are infected) to decrease severity and deaths),” he said.