Hospitalizations of Covid-19 children reach new high. This isn’t the only reason kids need to be protected from Delta, doctors say

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This is the highest rate of new hospitalizations for Covid-19 among children in over a year – a record that was broken several times in August, according to CDC data.

“It’s so easy to pass from person to person.” As of August 9, he said, “half of the children we admitted were under 2”.

Doctors say it’s crucial to protect children from the Delta variant – not only for their health and to continue learning in person, but also to help prevent the more aggressive variants from rolling back across the country.

204,000 new pediatric cases in one week

Since the last school year, a more contagious variant – Alpha – has been replaced by an even more contagious variant – Delta – as the dominant strain of coronavirus in the United States.
Children's hospital nears capacity amid wave of Delta variants
In just two months, Delta has grown from 3% to more than 93% of coronavirus samples sequenced in the United States, the CDC said.

Now, cases of Covid-19 in children have “increased exponentially,” the American Academy of Pediatrics said Tuesday.

In the week ending August 26, around more than 200,000 new cases of Covid-19 in children were reported, the AAP said.

That’s “a five-fold increase last month, from around 38,000 cases the week ending July 22 to nearly 204,000 last week.”

Of the children hospitalized with Covid-19, many were previously in good health.

Almost half – 46.4% – of children hospitalized with Covid-19 between March 2020 and June 2021 had no known underlying conditions, according to CDC data from nearly 100 U.S. counties.

MIS-C and long Covid can leave lasting impacts

Long-term complications from Covid-19 can be significant for children – even for some who initially had mild or no symptoms, the American Academy of Pediatrics has said.

All pediatric patients who test positive should have at least one follow-up examination with a pediatrician, the AAP said.

Pediatricians should be careful of residual or long-term Covid-19 problems such as respiratory symptoms, which can last for three months or more; heart problems, including a type of heart inflammation known as myocarditis; cognitive problems such as “brain fog”; headache; fatigue and mental health issues, the AAP said.
Children can fight Covid-19 complications for months

Children who have had moderate or severe Covid-19 may be at higher risk for subsequent heart disease, the pediatrician group said.

In some cases, children who start with mild or even no symptoms of Covid-19 find themselves hospitalized weeks or months later with a condition called MIS-C – multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children.

MIS-C is “a rare but serious disease associated with COVID-19 in which different parts of the body become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes or gastrointestinal organs” , according to the CDC.

This happens when “the virus prompts your body to produce an immune response against your own blood vessels” – which can cause inflammation of the blood vessels, said pediatrician Dr Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the hospital for children of Philadelphia. .

Often, children with MIS-C do not start very sick with Covid-19.

“Usually children are accidentally detected to have (coronavirus). A family member was infected, a friend was infected, so they had a PCR test. And they tested positive.… So they are fine, “said Offit.

Pediatrician: For the sake of the children, continue to wear your mask

“Then a month goes by and they develop a high fever. And signs of lung, liver, kidney or heart damage. That’s when they come to our hospital.”

At least 4,404 cases of MIS-C were reported between February 2020 and July 2021, including 37 deaths, the CDC said.

He said 99% of MIS-C patients had tested positive for the coronavirus, and the remaining 1% had been in contact with someone with Covid-19.

The median age of patients with MIS-C was 9 years.

The CDC is working to learn more about why some children and teens develop MIS-C after having COVID-19 or contact with someone with COVID-19, while others do. don’t, ”the CDC said.

A debate emerges around Covid-19 testing strategies for this school year

“Based on what we now know about MIS-C, the best way to protect your child is to take daily steps to prevent your child and the whole household from contracting the virus that causes COVID-19. “

The best steps parents can take are to get vaccinated and to immunize children aged 12 and older, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said.

And even if a parent is fully vaccinated, there is a small chance that they could catch an asymptomatic infection and pass the virus on to their children.

That’s why it’s a good idea for all parents of young children to wear masks in indoor public places, Walensky said.

But the best way to protect unvaccinated children, she said, “is to surround them with vaccinated people.”

Protecting children from Covid-19 is essential to keep them in schools

With the highly contagious Delta variant, the CDC recommends that K-12 students, as well as teachers and visitors, wear masks to school.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends masks in schools for everyone over 2 years of age.

“Our children deserve to have a full-time, in-person, safe learning with prevention measures in place. And that includes wearing masks for everyone in schools,” Walensky said.

Here's how schools should handle a Covid-19 outbreak, experts say

Some students are returning to school for the first time in a year. But long-awaited classroom learning can quickly be compromised by infection or epidemic.

In Mississippi and Florida, thousands of students starting their school year have already had to self-quarantine.

And it doesn’t take much for Covid-19 to close a school again. Even one case can have a ripple effect on students, faculty, and staff.

“We need adults to run the schools, and if my adults are sick or need to be quarantined, I don’t have adults present to provide education,” said Carlee Simon, superintendent of public schools. from Alachua County in Florida.

“When we have families who don’t want to have masks on their child, what they’re doing isn’t just (increasing the) chance that they’ll have to be quarantined,” Simon said.

If a student is infected, “they will also have other students who were wearing masks and who should also be quarantined.”

“Everyone wants to move forward. No one wants to have masks forever,” Simon said. But “we would like to be able to be safe and have some teaching time with our students.”

In addition to masks in schools, the CDC recommends layering other strategies such as improved ventilation, physical distancing, and testing on a screening basis.

Children can accidentally help stimulate new variants

Protecting children from Covid-19 can help everyone in the long run, doctors say.

As the coronavirus continues to spread, reproducing in new people, the more likely it is to mutate – potentially leading to variants that are even more contagious or that could escape vaccines.
Unvaccinated people are 'variant factories', infectious disease expert says

“This is, of course, the concern,” Walensky said.

People who are fully vaccinated are less likely to be infected with the Delta variant.
But unvaccinated people – including unvaccinated children – are more susceptible to infection. And they may unknowingly help create new variations, Offit said.

“If we are going to continue to allow this virus to spread, we will continue to allow the creation of these variants,” he said.

“We cannot stop this pandemic until we have a significant percentage of the population vaccinated.”

Childhood Covid-19 deaths shouldn’t be ignored, CDC chief says

While children are much less likely to die from Covid-19 than adults, deaths are still significant, Walensky said.

How to protect your children from the Delta variant
At least 496 American children have died from Covid-19, according to CDC data. For the 2019-2020 influenza season, the CDC reported 199 confirmed pediatric influenza deaths and approximately 434 pediatric influenza deaths.

One of the reasons Covid-19 is more deadly to children than other infectious diseases is that many children are vaccinated against other diseases, said Dr James Campbell, professor of pediatrics at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Maryland.

“Nobody dies from polio, nobody dies from measles in the United States. Nobody dies from diphtheria,” Campbell said.

But while children between the ages of 12 and 17 can get the Covid-19 vaccine, many haven’t. And it could still be several months before a vaccine is authorized for children under 12.
Why these parents proposed their young children for Covid-19 vaccine trials

Rebecca Calloway’s 7-year-old daughter, Georgia, is among thousands of young children who test various doses of Covid-19 vaccines to make sure they are safe and effective before they are allowed.

Part of the reason Calloway enrolled Georgia in the pediatric vaccine trial is that she recently lost her 3-year-old daughter to another unexpected illness – type 1 diabetes – and doesn’t want to anymore. that families lose a child to Covid. 19.

While child deaths from Covid-19 and type 1 diabetes are rare, Calloway said: “You don’t want to be that statistic.”

CNN’s Deidre McPhillips and Jen Christensen contributed to this report.

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