MOSCOW, October 29. /TASS/. Nowadays, kids under four have begun to get sick with the novel coronavirus infection twice as much as at the start of 2020, while children aged 5-14 are coming down with it three times as often, Chief Non-Resident Pediatric Specialist in Preventive Medicine of the Russian Health Ministry Leila Namazova-Baranova said on Friday.

"According to the World Health Organization, <...> since the beginning of 2020 through the end of summer of 2021, <...> 1% of children in the 1-4 age group were among all those infected and now it's 2%. And children aged 5-14 began to get sick three times as often, generally at the expense of teenagers. The total share of children among those who are ill has increased from 2.5% to 7.8%," she said at a roundtable discussion on the protection of the health of mothers and children during the pandemic.

According to the expert, these bring up the issue of protecting children against the novel coronavirus infection, taking into account that they also may develop a severe case of the disease. "Among them, just as among pregnant women, there are a lot of children with various comorbidities, with cardiovascular diseases, obesity, coagulation system disorders, and so on," she pointed out.

"That is why nowadays it is important to realize that the principles of the protection against the infection remain the same. If we are talking about organized groups, for example, about schools or kindergartens, the first measure is frequent ventilation, as banal as it sounds, because air conditioning does not impact the virus in any way, the virus develops quite well in a dry, air-conditioned environment. That said, airing out [the area] makes it possible to lessen the concentration of the virus in a room to some extent," she noted, adding that it was also necessary to use the means of individual protection, masks and sanitize hands.