American Coronavirus: Here’s Why It’s Now One Of The Pandemic’s Most Dangerous Times For Children, Expert Says

“My concerns are deep and I am very concerned,” President Joe Biden said when asked if school-aged children are returning to class and if schools may not be able to stay open.

“I also understand that the reason children get infected is that, in most cases, they live in states and communities with low immunization rates and they get it from unvaccinated adults. is what is happening. And so my plea is that for those not vaccinated, think about it. “

While the elderly were once considered the population most vulnerable to the virus, age constraints surrounding vaccinations now leave children most at risk, CNN medical analyst Dr Jonathan Reiner told Don Lemon of CNN.

Wen said it’s clear what is needed to make school safe for children – layers of protection.

When one layer is removed, such as when social distancing is removed so that students can congregate in a classroom, the other layers of virus protection become even more crucial, she said. These layers include at least a three-layer surgical mask, improved ventilation, vaccination, and testing.

“By putting all of this together, we can get kids back to school safely,” Wen said.

Time is running out to clear vaccines for children, expert says

Currently, Covid-19 vaccines are only allowed for people 12 years of age and older, but many experts and officials have called for efforts to approve vaccines for young children to be accelerated before more children are infected.

“I think time is running out. As we move into late fall and early winter, you want a vaccine for young children,” said Dr Paul Offit, vaccine advisor with the United States Food and Drug Administration to Erica Hill from CNN. “I certainly hope we will have one in place by then, because the kids need it.”

The FDA understands the public health impact of having a vaccine for young children, but wants to see the necessary data before making a decision, said Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

In the meantime, Offit noted that children who are still too young to receive the vaccine rely on eligible adults and teens around them to protect them by getting the vaccine – which many have yet to do.

“I think as adults we really left our kids here,” Offit said.

As the start of the school year approaches, the mandates are being debated

Until the vaccines can be given to younger people, some officials hope the masks will help reduce the spread of the virus.

A majority of parents say they are opposed to schools demanding that their children be vaccinated against Covid-19, but are accepting mask mandates much more, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation Vaccine Monitor poll released Wednesday.

Among parents of school-aged children in the United States, 63% said their child’s school should require unvaccinated students and staff to wear masks, according to the survey. Some 36% of parents said schools should not require masks for the unvaccinated.

In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear announced on Tuesday that masks will be mandatory in K-12 schools, preschools and daycares.

“We are at the point where we cannot allow our children to enter these buildings without protection, without vaccination and face this Delta variant,” Beshear said. “Then I will have the courage to do what I know is right to protect our children.”

In Illinois, Governor JB Pritzker compared the enforcement of mask warrants to schools with a dress code.

Asked what schools should do when students are not wearing masks, Pritzker said: “Well, school districts have had dress codes for many years and so they’re just supposed to do the same thing they do. literally for decades. “

In California, Orange County public schools received about 8,200 mask removal notes on the first day of school, according to school district spokeswoman Sara Au. Au said demand is about 4% of the student body.

The school district kicked off the school year on Tuesday with a mask warrant that allows students to opt out of the requirement.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis last month issued an executive order banning school districts from requiring the use of masks, a move former White House Covid-19 adviser Andy Slavitt has said is dangerous.

“When school districts try to do the right thing and he reverses them, it both reverses the conservative tenets of local control, but more importantly, it puts children at risk,” Slavitt told CNN.

Already, the state is suffering from an increase in Covid-19 cases. In recent days, the federal government has sent 200 ventilators to Florida as the state has some of the highest per capita hospitalization rates in the country, a health administration official has confirmed.

Impacts felt in hospitals across the country

The impacts of the spread of the variant can be seen in hospitals in the United States.

At the New Orleans Children’s Hospital, 18 children are hospitalized with Covid-19 and six are in pediatric intensive care. The number of children battling the disease is unlike anything the hospital has seen at any other time during the pandemic, nurse Kendal Jaffe told CNN’s Nick Valencia.

“In the past year, we haven’t seen as many children contracting acute lung disease from Covid as we are seeing now,” she said. “The Delta variant definitely hits them a lot harder, a lot faster than we’ve seen in the past.”

One patient, Nelson, 17, has trouble breathing and his parents thought he was going to die when they brought him in. Elsewhere in the hospital, a girl who hasn’t even celebrated her second birthday is in intensive care.

Healthcare professionals who treat adults also feel the pressure.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services announced on Tuesday that the state had seen its largest one-day increase in intensive care admissions since the start of the pandemic, and that weekly hospitalizations of Covid- 19 of residents aged 20 to 49 are now at an all time high.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said Tuesday that state hospitals were under pressure.

“I keep looking for a breaking point where we could start going down again, and while there have been national predictions about it, we just don’t see it in the data yet. You can see that we continue to increase, week after week, in our cases, ”he said.