EDITORIAL - Protect the children

Doctors battling COVID-19 are again exhausted and are warning that the worst is yet to come as hospitals become overwhelmed. The doctors include microbiologist Nina Gloriani, who chairs the Vaccine Expert Panel of the Technical Working Group for COVID-19 Vaccines.

The doctors’ warning of the worst still ahead, as the more virulent Delta variant of COVID races across the country, has also been aired by the Department of Health. While COVID vaccines are proving to be effective in keeping out serious infections, a worrisome development is that the Delta-driven surge is increasingly affecting minors.

In Mandaluyong, the city government reported that from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 alone, 72 of the 404 new infections were pediatric cases. Several of the minors have required hospitalization, the city government reported; the rest are under isolation or on home quarantine.

Since the start of the pandemic, minors had shown strong resistance to the original strain of COVID, although there were also cases of infections and deaths even among infants. That resistance made pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies focus their COVID vaccine development on adults and the elderly.

Delta is changing this. In the United States, several state governments are considering suspending face-to-face classes because of a spike in pediatric COVID infections. Inoculation of schoolchildren against COVID has started in the US, but vaccine hesitancy remains high among Americans.

In the Philippines, the Food and Drug Administration has approved the Pfizer and Moderna jabs for adolescents. But the earliest that pediatric vaccination can start is in October, when inoculation of the older priority groups is finished.

These developments should be considered amid an intensified push for easing mobility restrictions anew on minors, and for a limited resumption of face-to-face classes. The past school year has shown that blended education cannot replace in-person learning. Restrictions on minors have also been disastrous for many businesses.

With Delta posing a serious health risk to children, however, any proposal to ease restrictions on minors must be considered with utmost care. Hospitals are overwhelmed enough, and healthcare workers are already groaning from exhaustion.