Daily US Times: More than a year into the coronavirus pandemic, death toll Brazil are now at their peak. But despite the overwhelming evidence that Covid-19 rarely kills young children, in Brazil 1,300 babies have died so far from the virus. One doctor refused to test Jessika Ricarte’s one-year-old son for Covid-19, saying his symptoms did not fit the profile of coronavirus. Two months later he died of complications from the Covid-19.
After two years of trying, and failed fertility treatments, Jessika Ricarte, a teacher, had all but given up on having a family. Then she fell pregnant with Lucas.
She said: “His (her son) name comes from luminous. And he was a light in our life. He showed that happiness was much more than we imagined.”
There is a misconception that children are at zero risk for Covid, says Dr Fatima Marinho from the University of São Paolo, who is also a senior adviser to the international health NGO Vital Strategies.
Marinho’s research has found that a shockingly high number of babies and children have been affected by the virus.
Between February 2020 and 15 March 2021, Covid-19 killed at least 852 children in Brazil up to the age of nine, including 518 babies under one year old, according to data from the Brazilian Ministry of Health.
But Dr Marinho estimates that more than twice this number of children died of Covid-19. A serious problem of underreporting due to lack of testing is bringing the numbers down, she says.
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