We won’t know how dangerous the Delta variant of COVID-19 is for children until school starts

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screening for COVID in children Menahem Kahana / AFP / Getty Images

Children and teens prepare to return to school in the United States as the Delta variant of COVID-19 continues to increase hospitalizations in the United States, including in children’s hospitals. From July 31 to August 6, an average of 216 children with COVID-19 were hospitalized per day in the United States, just before the pandemic peaked in January, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tennessee children’s hospitals will be full by the end of this week, the state health department predicted on Monday.

The looming question parents ask themselves at the start of the school year is: do more children get sick and go to hospital because the much more contagious Delta variant infects more children? , or does the Delta variant make children sicker than previous strains?

Pediatricians and epidemiologists do not yet have a good answer.

Most children who contract COVID-19 “aren’t very sick,” said Dr. Wassam Rahman, medical director of the pediatric emergency center at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. The New York Times. “But as you can imagine, the families are afraid.” And since hospitalizations are a lagging indicator, “I think time will tell, really,” if the Delta strain is more severe in children, Rahman added. “We need at least a month, maybe two months, before we get a feel for the trends.”

This is a particularly long wait for children under 12 who return to school still ineligible for COVID-19 vaccines, and their parents.

“There is no strong evidence that the disease is more serious,” said Dr. Jim Versalovic, acting chief pediatrician at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. Times. Nationally, about 1% of infected children end up in hospital and 0.01% die from it, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Yet more children with COVID-19 mean more children hospitalized with the virus, Versalovic said. “It’s a numbers game at this point.”

Until more data arrives, parents and children ages 2 and older wear masks in larger crowds, AAP’s Sean O’Leary said The Washington Post. “The most important thing we can do is get everyone who is eligible to be vaccinated to be vaccinated.” Dr Richard Malley, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital, agreed. “The surest way to never know if Delta is more aggressive towards children than the original strain is to really improve the vaccination,” he told the Times.

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