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Childhood hospitalizations for Covid-19 have reached their highest level in the United States since the country began monitoring pediatric cases about a year ago.
At the end of August, the average daily admissions hovered around 300 cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Doctors warn the situation could worsen as schools begin the school year and the delta variant, which has spread across the country, is spreading much faster than others.
And although the pediatric death rate is less than 1%, the most serious problem, experts say, are the consequences the virus can cause in minors.
Among them is multisystem inflammatory syndrome (PIMS, for its acronym in English, also known as SIMP or MISC-C), which can damage children’s hearts, as well as their digestive, nervous and respiratory systems.
Pediatrician Christina Propst tells firsthand about her experience treating children with covid-19 and the situation at Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest medical complex.
“What I see in children with covid scares me. Some of my patients have required intensive care, and in the past few weeks I have seen child deaths at Texas Medical Center.
These deaths are devastating, especially when you consider the suffering that an intubated child must endure over a long period of time.
The problem is that the delta affects more children than the other variants. In fact, at Texas Children’s Hospital, a third of children admitted for covid require intensive care.
This very often means that they need respiratory assistance. It’s really heartbreaking to see children intubated by covid.
I wouldn’t have said this a year ago when we had the alpha variant, but it was nothing compared to what we’re going through now.
Nationwide pediatric cases have quadrupled in the past month in the United States, and one reason is that the delta variant is much easier to transmit.
A second reason is that children are not vaccinated. On the one hand, children under 12 are not eligible for the vaccine, and on the other hand, many adolescents have not been vaccinated. It’s a big problem.
And the third reason for the increase in covid in children is that many adults do not use the mask.
They walk around as if nothing has happened, not realizing that they may be asymptomatic and, as a result, may infect their children or other children.
I wish more people could see what pediatricians working on the front lines are seeing right now. It is simply tragic, odious, devastating.
I feel the same as many pediatricians. I feel a combination of extreme pain, anger and frustration because a child’s death from covid is completely preventable.
If you have a child over 12 years old, you must immunize him or her. It’s like when you demand that he buckle up in the car so his life is not in danger.
I have seen parents who have lost their children and beg people to get vaccinated to spare other families the pain they are feeling.
I remember the case of one of my patients, a baby just five weeks old who was diagnosed with covid and whose mother, unfortunately, also had the disease.
It is a family with other dependent children, few economic resources and whose mother tongue is not English. Fortunately, the baby did well and is now at home.
But other children, unfortunately, suffer from very serious sequelae such as a multisystem inflammatory reaction which can damage the heart, lungs, kidneys and other organs.
We’re definitely seeing a rebound in these cases and a lot of people don’t know that. If a child has myocarditis and catches Covid, he could be suffering from heart failure.
In other cases, you may have kidney failure that requires dialysis after contracting COVID.
I would say that aside from death, these are some of the most serious possible sequelae the disease can cause.
There’s also the long-standing covid, which took a lot longer for kids to be recognized compared to the adult population, largely because kids don’t talk to the media, vote, and do of donations to politicians.
If we pay attention to what happens with children who have prolonged covid, we realize that they experience fatigue, headaches, mental confusion, sleep disturbances, discomfort, changes in smell and taste.
Some of these children developed severe depression.
One of the most worrying things is that covid can have repercussions for decades to come with consequences that are not even known today.
The image becomes more complicated. About half of the covid tests I performed in a single week came back positive. That’s a 50% positivity rate just in my practice.
And that was before the school year started at the end of August.
What I saw was that opening schools only put gasoline on the fire because it accelerates the rate of positivity in children, at least here in Houston.
It is truly terrifying when the world’s largest medical center, Texas Medical Center, is about to be overwhelmed.
The intensive care unit at Texas Children’s Hospital is full and it affects other children who may need intensive care because they have had an accident or developed, for example, bacterial meningitis. what are you doing with them?
A similar situation is also occurring in other parts of the United States.
In one week in August, in just one week, 180,000 new cases of pediatric covid were diagnosed in the country.
And a lot of people don’t want to get vaccinated despite what we’re going through. Here in Texas, only 56% of people are vaccinated with both doses. At this point, it’s cruel.
People should take this seriously for children. At present, they are the most vulnerable because the elderly can receive a third dose.
In contrast, children cannot even receive their first dose if they are under 12 years old. Therefore, for me, the most important thing is that everyone who can get the vaccine does so.
You might think it’s obvious, but apparently you have to shout it from the rooftops of every building.
Our last hope right now is for people to wear masks and for us to behave like responsible adults.
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