At least 4,000 children with Covid-19 were hospitalized in the United States this Wednesday (5), according to a survey by the American newspaper Washington Post.
The figure represents the highest number of hospitalizations within this group, above previous peaks recorded during the summer in the US, between the months of June and August. At the time, the delta variant was predominant among infections; today, it is the omicron that is mainly responsible for new cases of coronavirus – 95.4%, according to the most recent data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Less than two weeks ago, at Christmas, Washington Post figures showed fewer than 2,000 children hospitalized with Covid, half the number now recorded in the country.
“It is critical that we protect our children and adolescents from Covid-19 infection,” said Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC. The agency, also on Wednesday, gave the go-ahead for the application of booster doses with the Pfizer immunizer to everyone between 12 and 15 years of age.
Under current rules, children as young as five are also eligible to receive the first and second doses of Pfizer’s immunizer, but not Moderna’s or Janssen’s.
“Covid is overwhelming our hospitals and children’s hospitals. [A vacina] It’s a tool we need to use to help our children during this pandemic,” said pediatrician Katherine Poehling, a member of the CDC expert panel that approved the booster dose.
The institution’s data indicate that the age group from 5 to 11 years old is the one that most started and completed the vaccination schedule in the last 14 days (21.8% and 37.1%, respectively). However, the group, which is equivalent to 8.7% of the US population, has only 2.9% of its members immunized with at least the first dose, and 2.2% with both (or a single dose). ).
The same age group accounts for 6% of Covid-19 cases registered in the US, according to CDC data. In total, 221 children (0.03%) in this group died as a result of the disease.
The range from 12 to 17 years old corresponds to 7.1% of the total cases and 0.07% of the total deaths (489 deaths). In this group (7.6% of the population), those who received the first dose of the vaccine add up to 6.6%, a proportion that is repeated among those who have a complete vaccination schedule.
A report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released last week indicates that Covid cases among children follow the same upward trend seen in the US as a whole.
In the week ending December 30, the AAP counted more than 325,000 new infections in this group. The number represents a jump of 64% from the 199,000 registered in the week of December 23 and almost double the number of confirmed cases in the previous two weeks.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the AAP, nearly 7.9 million children have been infected by the coronavirus. Of this total, 2.8 million (or 35.4%) cases were registered from September 2021 onwards.
Although the worsening of Covid-19 among children is still rare, the concern is that they can act as transmitters, often asymptomatic, to more vulnerable groups. The fear has led cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Detroit to suspend or postpone the resumption of face-to-face classes after the holiday break.
If the rise in hospitalizations among children is frightening, the total numbers of hospitalizations for Covid-19 in the US are even more alarming. The Our World in Data portal counts 113,073 patients with coronavirus in hospitals – a number that is increasingly approaching the peak of 133,000 recorded in January last year. On November 5, there were 40,944 hospitalized with Covid, which indicates a 176% jump in hospitalizations.
The US has also been hitting consecutive records since Christmas in the moving average of Covid cases. The index reached 574,700 this Wednesday – an increase of 686% in two months.
In the same period, the average number of deaths (1222.71) grew by 1.5%. While it is far from the peaks of January 2021, when more than 3,000 Americans died from Covid a day, the current death rate is more than five times what it was in July, when the death curve reached its lowest level in as a result of vaccination and control measures.
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