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The Omicron variant of the coronavirus, which is causing a huge increase in infections in the United States, has also increased the number of children admitted to hospitals as experts have expressed concern that most young people are not vaccinated.
“It’s so heavy,” said Dr. Paul Offit, infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It was quite difficult last year, but now you know you have a way to prevent all of this,” he said, referring to vaccination.
During the period from December 21 to 27, an average of 334 children aged 17 and under were admitted to hospital every day due to coronavirus, a 58% increase from a week earlier, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC. The previous peak during the pandemic was in early September, when hospitalizations of children reached an average of 342 per day, according to the CDC.
However, children continue to represent a small percentage of those admitted to hospitals with COVID-19. On average over 9,400 people a day of adulthood were admitted to hospitals during the same period in December. Many doctors say young people who are hospitalized now look less ill than those who were treated over the summer with infections caused by the Delta variant.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two months after the approval of the COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 years, only about 14% of them are fully vaccinated. The vaccination rate is highest for children aged 12 to 17 years, about 53%.
In many cases, the main factor for the low vaccination rate for younger children is time, says Dr. Albert Ko, professor of epidemiology and infectious diseases at Yale University. The COVID-19 vaccine for younger children was not approved until November 2021, and many of them have just received the second dose, he said.
Dr. Paul Offit said none of the children eligible to receive the vaccine that had been admitted to his hospital about a week ago had been vaccinated, even though two-thirds of them had health problems, chronic lung disease and overweight. Only one of the patients was under the age of 5, so he was not qualified to receive the vaccine.
Overall, new cases in Americans of all ages have risen to the highest levels recorded, reaching an average of 300,000 infections per day or 2.5 times higher than the number of infections just two weeks ago. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 59% of new cases last week were with the highly contagious Omicron variant.
However, according to preliminary data, the Omicron variant causes milder diseases than the previous variants and that the combination of the vaccine with the booster dose seems to protect people from its more severe effects. Deaths from COVID-19 have been found to be rare in children during the pandemic. So far 721 children have died from COVID-19 in the United States, according to data reported by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The total number of deaths caused by coronavirus in the US has reached over 800,000.
Nearly 199,000 cases of children with COVID-19 were reported during December 16-23, according to a statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics. That was about 20% of the more than 950,000 total cases reported that week in the United States.
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