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The alarming tendency of children who are too young to receive the vaccine underscores the need for older children and adults to receive their shots to protect those around them.
The hospitalization of children under the age of five in the United States with COVID-19 has risen in recent weeks since the pandemic began, according to government data on a single age group that is not yet eligible for the vaccine.
The worrying trend of vaccinating children under stress underscores the need for older people and adults to shoot their own to help protect those around them, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Friday.
Since mid-December, with the highly contagious Omicron variant spreading furiously across the country, the hospitalization rate for these young children has risen from more than 100,000 children to more than four, up from 2.5 per 100,000.
The rate for children between the ages of five and 17 is about one in 100,000, according to the CDC, with more than 250 hospitals in 14 states.
Overall, “pediatric hospitalizations are at their highest rate compared to any point before the pandemic,” Walensky said.
About 50% of children between the ages of 12 and 18, and only 16% of children between the ages of 5 and 11, are fully integrated.
The overall hospitalization rate for children and adolescents is still lower than for any other age group. And they account for less than five percent of the average daily hospital admissions, according to the CDC.
On Tuesday, the average number of patients under the age of 18 on the day he was admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 was 766, double what he had just two weeks ago.
The trend among very young children is driven by high hospitalization rates in five states: Georgia, Connecticut, Tennessee, California and Oregon, with the largest increases in Georgia, the CDC said.
Less serious, more cases
In a briefing, Walensky said the number is COVID-19 and that children are hospitalized and admitted for other reasons but are infected.
The CDC also said that the increase can be attributed in part to how COVID-19 hospitalizations are defined in this age group: a positive test for the virus within 14 days of hospitalization for any reason.
The severity of childhood illness in the Omicron wave is lower than with the Delta variant, said Dr. John McGuire, head of critical care at Seattle Children’s Hospital.
“Most COVID + children in the hospital are not here because of COVID-19 disease,” McGuire said in an email. “They’re here for other issues, but they’ve been positive.”
The nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said earlier this week that Omicron appears to be a less serious disease in general, but the high number of infections means that many more children will be infected and some of them will be hospitalized. will end.
Fauci also said that many children in hospital with COVID-19 have other health conditions that can lead to complications from the virus. This includes obesity, diabetes, and lung disease.
Many had hoped that the new year could lead to vaccination for young children, but Pfizer announced last month that two doses did not provide as much protection as expected in two or four young people.
The Pfizer study has been updated to give a third dose to all children under five, and data is expected in early spring.
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