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It has been he said several times public health figures and politicians, and magazines like this, That Covid-19 is a non-vaccinated pandemic. The line is easy to write, because it’s true. Among those vaccinated, progressive infections are a problem, with the virus entering the margins of our collective immunity. But serious illness and death are almost entirely concentrated among those who have not yet achieved shooting.
Who are these people who have not been vaccinated? They are getting younger and younger. The largest group are young children under the age of 12 who are not allowed to be vaccinated. But the picture is not much better in older children. In the United States, only one-third of children between the ages of 12 and 15 are fully vaccinated, according to the pictures Collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it remains below the average figure for adolescents and those in their thirties. It is not surprising, then, that 22% of U.S. cases were reported in the third week of August, for a total of 180,000, were diagnosed in childrencompared to the 14 percent share since the pandemic began. This weekly number is double what it was at the beginning of the month and causes tension in pediatric units in the US, especially in areas where there are many high-transmission Delta variants.
“When people quit masks and started socializing again, then we saw our point,” says Abdallah Dalabih, a physician at Arkansas Hospital, where only Covid-19 state pediatric ICU was admitted in early August and still remained stubbornly high.
“We all thought we were done with Covid, so unfortunately, people haven’t stopped having a lot of interaction this summer,” says Kofi Asare-Bawuah, a pediatrician at CoxHealth in Springfield, Missouri. The Ozark region, which witnessed one of the earliest rises in the U.S. Delta in July, is still being watched increase in MIS-C cases, an inflammatory immune condition that occurs in some young people in the weeks following infection. In recent weeks, Asare-Bawuah’s team has sent three children with life-threatening cases to a larger St. Louis hospital.
David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, says the reality is exhausting and goes against the narrative that should end the pandemic. “We’re all disgusted,” she says, acknowledging the kind-smelling eye all over her room to her 9-year-old daughter, who is also tired of hearing about the pandemic. It is also a confusing reality. The rules of the pandemic that took root 18 months ago were roughly as follows: young and vulnerable should stay home and take other measures to protect the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions. This understanding arose from the silver ledge of the pandemic: that young people develop the least amount of serious illness that causes hospitalization or death – an unusual pattern of respiratory illness that often affects both children and the elderly.
Experts like Fisman are concerned that fatigue and failure to pay attention to children’s risks take fewer measures as transmission among children increases. “I think there’s a lot of attention to risk in older people,” he says. Maybe we’ve dropped the guards too fast, and it’s time to calibrate. Here are some things to know:
Why doesn’t the virus affect adults as much?
In recent months, researchers studying the immune system have begun to feel more confident with some explanations. One difference is that children seem to have a more immune system to fight when Covid-19 infection begins. The immune response begins with the production of an anti-virus protein called interferon, which binds a battalion of immune cells up to the nose, explained Kerstin Meyer, a senior scientist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. who has learned the difference between adult and child responses. In the case of the elderly, one of the hallmarks of Covid-19 infections is that these early warning signs are often eliminated, preventing this crucial early response. This allows the virus to multiply rapidly in the upper respiratory tract and then spread deeper to the lungs, causing more serious diseases. But in children, “viral stupidity is avoided,” Meyer says. Cells in the nose and throat appear earlier to give a quick response, so the infection usually ends before anything less than mild symptoms.
But what if that doesn’t take away a bit? It still seems like kids have advantages. The natural immune response soon coincides with adaptation, the force that recruits and multiplies specific cells, such as B and T cells, to fight against a particular pathogen. One theory is that young bodies have more adaptable immune systems. In adults, these B and T cells are adapted to fight previously seen infections, but in the face of a completely new pathogen, such as SARS-CoV-2, it leaves fewer available for learning new tricks. In some cases, the adult body hires immune cells that are not good for work, a poorly calibrated response, and at worst, if the virus is not cleared, it can cause escape effects that cause damage to the body. Young people have a more diverse set of “naive” immune cells, giving them a better chance of producing antibodies to fight the new infection. They learn lessons quickly, like children who listen to a new language.
Does Delta make children sicker than other variants?
So far there is little evidence to suggest that the Delta variant is more harmful than adults. According to the CDC, Delta infections are shown to be more severe in all age groups, but the agency has yet to provide a specific breakdown for children. In Ontario, while Fisman is monitoring the hospitalization rate among young people, children under the age of 10 who are infected with Delta are twice as likely to be hospitalized with those infected with other variants. But data are still relatively scarce — there are 1,300 cases among children under the age of 10 in the territory, and only 26 are hospitalized — and there are too few cases to estimate the relative risk of admission or death in the ICU. But Fisman’s confidence in its conclusions is growing as more data is entered. “The bet is a little bigger to keep this away from the kids,” he says.
Fisman added that the problem is much greater in how the Delta moves in an unincorporated population. Say that the arrival of the variant leads to a doubling of the hospitalization rate for children with Covid — less than 1% in the case of children under 18 before reaching Delta — according to the CDC. That’s a pretty small number. But when the virus is transmitted in a more aggressive video clip, the increasing denominator (number of cases) becomes significant. “This means that these rare events occur in greater numbers,” Fisman says. “That’s a big concern.”
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