(Kiev) “It’s hard when your baby suffocates, it’s very scary,” says Katia Verbina, fixing an oxygen mask on the face of her son, victim of the new wave of COVID-19 which is severely affecting the Ukraine.
Micha, three months old, has already spent ten days in the Kiev Pediatric Infectious Disease Hospital due to pneumonia. Gnawed by anguish, her 29-year-old mother said she lost seven kilograms.
Reserved for children suffering from COVID-19, this 100-bed facility is seeing an increasing influx of young patients with severe respiratory disorders.
In the spring, “a third of the patients needed oxygen, today it is two thirds”, notes Vitali Yevtouchenko, a 49-year-old infectious disease specialist.
Because the new wave, which began this fall, is due to the Delta variant, which is more contagious and, according to doctors, more dangerous for children.
It was also favored by a lagging vaccination in a country, among the poorest in Europe, with a failing health system.
With 769 deaths, this former Soviet republic was among the three countries in the world with the most deaths in their latest daily reports on Wednesday, behind the United States and Russia.
The new wave also caused the first deaths from COVID-19 among pediatric hospital patients: two babies and a disabled eight-year-old boy. “The treatment did not work”, notes Alina Riazanskykh, head of the intensive care unit, 32 years old.
The public authorities are basing their hopes in an acceleration of vaccination to stem the epidemic.
Reluctance to vaccines
And while more and more people are getting immunized, not least due to restrictions on the unvaccinated, to date less than a third of adult Ukrainians have received both doses.
It is in this context that President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Monday the next payment of around 35 euros to the vaccinated.
“It is a normal practice, respectful towards people”, estimates Doctor Yevtouchenko. He also pleads for the vaccination of children.
This has been authorized for a month in Ukraine for minors aged 12 to 17 with Pfizer / BioNTech. But so far, only some 30,000 young people have received at least one dose, the health ministry told AFP.
Mother of a hospitalized child, Sasha Voïtenko, 23, now plans to be vaccinated “quickly” after leaving the hospital with her one-month-old daughter Eva.
But the idea of immunizing children remains unpopular.
Vaccinated herself, Oksana Potaptchouk, a 32-year-old manicurist, has been in hospital for three days with her son Roman, an eight-year-old boy, annoyed by his oxygen mask and the incessant blood tests.
Closed schools
For her, it is out of the question for her 12-year-old daughter to receive the injection. “I have not seen reliable studies on these vaccines,” proclaims the young woman.
Lilia Gorodskykh, whose 2-year-old son is in intensive care with pleurisy, is among the few pro-vaccines. “We’re going to vaccinate him in all likelihood” if he becomes eligible, said the 27-year-old teacher, comforting her tearful boy.
Out of 3.3 million coronavirus infections recorded in Ukraine since spring 2020, almost 180,000 cases, including 288 fatalities, have concerned minors.
To curb the spread of the virus among children, Kiev city hall ordered schools to close in early November, angering many parents.
Doctors are happy to do so.
“We are feeling the effect,” says Mme Riazanskykh, whose intensive care unit now has only one patient for six beds, whereas they were all occupied last week.
The director of the hospital, Tetiana Kaminska is therefore concerned about the reopening of schools announced for Monday. “We’ll see what happens in a week. There will most likely be another outbreak. ”