The commission said that since 1 April 2020, up to 147,492 children in India have lost one of the parents or both of them due to COVID-19 and for other reasons. A breakdown of the data shows that 136,910 children lost one parent, 10,094 people became orphans, and 488 children were abandoned.
The maximum number of children are in the 8-13 year age group (59,010), followed by the children in the 14-15 year age group (22,763), in the 16-18 year age group (22,626) and from four to seven years (26,080), according to the commission.
The commission elaborated that the maximum number of affected children is from the states of Odisha (24,405), followed by Maharashtra (19,623), Gujarat (14,770), Tamil Nadu (11,014), Uttar Pradesh (9,247), Andhra Pradesh (8,760), Madhya Pradesh (7,340), West Bengal (6,835), Delhi (6,629) and Rajasthan (6,827).
India has recorded a total of 37,618,271 cases since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, with 35,394,882 recoveries and 486,784 deaths.