'Boy's death shows importance of Covid, flu jabs'
Two leading child-health experts said on Saturday that the recent death of a twenty-month-old child who had contracted Covid-19 underlines once again the need for parents to have their children vaccinated. The boy passed away after being diagnosed with Covid and developing complication of acute necrotising encephalitis. Speaking on a Commercial Radio programme, Lau Yu-lung who chairs the government's Scientific Committee on Vaccine Preventable Diseases, said some children with previous good health experience rapid deterioration within a few days of being exposed to the Covid or flu viruses. Lau, who is also a University of Hong Kong paediatrics professor, said this is believed to be linked to a deficiency in the body's immune function, and the specific reasons are still being researched. He urged parents to get their children vaccinated against the viruses as soon as possible. Speaking to reporters after attending the same radio programme, another HKU paediatrician, Patrick Ip, said that complications from Covid are far more common in children who lack immune protection and who haven't been vaccinated. Ip said only a minority of children are jabbed, but the health sector is anticipating another major surge in Covid infections in the coming two months. "A particular concern is that up to the 15th of October, in Hong Kong, between those young children between six months old up to below three years old, we only have 30 percent of our children population have received one dose of Covid vaccination, and only 20 percent having two doses of Covid vaccination" "That means almost 80 percent of our young children do not have any proper Covid vaccination approaching this winter," he said.