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| The elderly are urged to get a booster shot, and young kids, their first dose |
Government
experts are urging high-risk individuals, particularly the elderly and young children,
to get vaccinated against Covid-19 amid a rise in the number of infections and
severe cases in the past two weeks.
The experts said the renewed rise in Covid-19 cases is driven by evolving virus strains and declining population immunity.
The Centre for Health Protection recorded a total of 81 severe cases of Covid-19 involving adults in the past four weeks, among which 30 resulted in death. That’s roughly one patient dying every day in about a month.
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| PINDUTIN PARA SA DETALYE |
The CHP figures also showed that 83% of the patients were aged 65 and above, and most had not received a booster dose of Covid-19 vaccine.
For children, the CHP has recorded five severe cases so far this year, with three not having received any dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. Two had underlying illnesses.
Speaking
on a radio program on Saturday, Lau Yu-lung, chairman of CHP’s scientific
committee on vaccine preventable diseases said that while the current toll of
severe cases and fatalities remains below levels seen during last year’s peak, the
public should not be complacent.
Lau said that the low transmission rate of the virus over the past six months resulted in lower levels of antibodies among residents.
"With the emergence of a variant known as KP.3, a certain
number of residents became infected, leading to more extensive transmission of
the virus once it entered the community,” said Lau.
He urged high-risk groups, particularly the elderly and the immunocompromised, to get booster shots as the vaccines continue to provide robust protection against severe infections.
In the same interview, Dr Mike Kwan, president of the Asian Society for Pediatric Infectious Diseases, raised concerns about a number of young children being hospitalized with severe Covid-19 symptoms.
Dr
Kwan said most of these children had not received any Covid-19 vaccinations and
were at greater risk of complications.
He said pediatric wards are now full of children with Covid-19, many of them unvaccinated. These children have experienced high fever for several days, which if left untreated could lead to pneumonia or croup.
In the past two months, there were also five to six cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome involving children. This is a rare but serious condition that occur after recovery, where the liver, heart or lungs are inflamed due to the infection.
Kwan assured
parents that Covid-19 vaccines are safe, so they should get their children vaccinated
as soon as possible to reduce the risk of severe illness.
