Watch out if your child shows a sudden aversion to food or appears to have caught a cold.

With the waters receding, city virologists have come up with a warning against virus-borne infections causing jaundice and respiratory problems in children.

Kids suffering from jaundice and respiratory problems have started pouring in at a steady rate into city hospitals, particularly at BC Roy Memorial Hospital for Children, Calcutta Medical College and Hospital and Nil Ratan Sarkar Medical College, according to paediatricians.

“Once the incubation period of the jaundice virus is over, the number of patients is expected to rise,” said a doctor. The jaundice virus has an incubation period of anything between 15 and 50 days.

Even if a child is infected, the symptoms might not show up, as the infection remains in the sub-clinical stage, according to Apurba Ghosh, the director of Institute of Child Health. “If you start treating the child for something else, it’s the liver that might take a beating at a tender age,” he added.

Jaundice is a feco-oral infection — where the virus spreads through human faeces and absence of proper hygienic conditions. “Children who have played around in shoes or slippers that have been used to walk the waterlogged streets can be bearers of the infection,” said Ghosh.

With the damp weather still hanging heavy, the setting is perfect for the proliferation of certain strains of viruses, including Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), the one that causes respiratory distress, said paediatricians.

Children are also susceptible to other microscopic forms causing diarrhoea and infections in the gastro-intestinal tracts.

“The problem is this RSV strain keeps mutating and appears in a new form every time we identify it,” said Nupur Ganguly, a senior city-based paediatrician. “On certain occasions, this strain leads to asthma attacks as well. Children, in particular, suffer immensely when this virus attacks,” she added.

The only visible symptom of an RSV virus attack in children is a persisting cough, said Ganguly.

The virus is highly contagious and can spread from close contact in schools, warned the paediatrician. “I hope parents realise that at times, it makes more sense to keep their sick child at home than to force him or her to school,” she said.