Thread by @vipintukur

XBB.1.16 #Arcturus Covid surge in India: How it is affecting young children & infants.

Here are the key findings based on our study of 25 children from April 4-16’ 23:

1-Current outbreak is causing a mild febrile illness
2-Total duration of illness is only 1-3 days. 1/

3-Young infants are disproportionately more affected than older children.

4-The youngest infant was 13 day old neonate!

5-infants below one year had a significantly higher positivity rate than older children (40.38% versus 10.5%, p=000816). 2/

6-Unlike the previous BA.2 Omicron wave, respiratory symptoms are predominating in young infants

7-Cycle threshold values for nucleocapsid and ORFlab genes on positive RT-PCR vary from 18 to 23. 3/

8-One surprising finding, not seen in the previous waves, was the presence of itchy, non-purulent, conjunctivitis that was solelv seen in intants.

9-Conjunctival involvement is seen in 42.8% of affected infants. 4/

https://twitter.com/vipintukur/status/1644026879740084225?s=46&t=Uqf1V489rmyfecmkYvIrXw

10-None of the positive case needed hospitalisation

11-All recovered with symptomatic treatment

I along with @dr_puneet prepared & posted a preprint on @medrxiv

Here is the link👇 5/

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

Forgot to attach the table with clinical features