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Opinion | Covid-19’s impact on Asian children should give countries hoarding vaccines pause

  • Asia is waking up to the pandemic’s silent and devastating impact on children and young people as the Delta variant smashes the myth of children’s immunity
  • Lengthy lockdowns, closed schools and deaths in the family are also straining young people’s mental health even as wealthy countries corner the lion’s share of vaccines

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A girl with no access to internet facilities and gadgets uses a microscope as she attends an open-air class outside a house with its walls converted into blackboards as schools remained closed at a village in the Indian state of West Bengal on September 13. Photo: Reuters

Vaccinations are gathering speed in many parts of Asia for adults who can get their hands on doses. Jabs are under way for teenagers in some countries. But this pandemic is having a silent and devastating impact on children.

Millions of young people have seen family members die. Children from India to Indonesia and Vietnam have been orphaned. Countless others lived in fear that this would happen to them. And it still might.
Before the huge waves of Delta variant infections washed onto Asia in May, a study in The Lancet found that globally, more than 1.5 million children had already experienced the death of a primary carer or grandparent who lived in their home.

Imagine what that’s like for a child, living with the trauma of losing a parent to this disease.

This virus does not discriminate. Yet the pandemic is having an unequal impact on people who can’t access vaccines because richer countries have taken the lion’s share. It’s affecting children whose parents can’t afford to stay at home so the virus is brought in through the front door.

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About 1,500 teenagers in Bangkok receive Pfizer-BioNTech vaccinations

About 1,500 teenagers in Bangkok receive Pfizer-BioNTech vaccinations

In Asia, both infections and deaths are higher than most could have imagined possible when the disease first broke out. Around 54 million people have been infected. Many have been hospitalised with serious and long-lasting health effects. Total lives lost from Covid-19 across Asian countries are creeping towards 1 million.

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