Five children, including a 4-month-old baby, are hospitalized in Huntsville after testing positive for the new coronavirus. Also among those children is a 4-year-old cancer patient, Huntsville Hospital CEO David Spillers said Wednesday.
Spillers said he hoped all the children would recover, but also noted that this is the first time that the hospital has seen such young patients during the pandemic. Children are hospitalized at Huntsville Hospital for Women and Children.
“If you think this doesn’t affect young people, it actually affects young people,” said Spillers. “It is the first time we have seen that during the pandemic.”
Related: AL.com’s Coverage of the Coronavirus Pandemic
The announcement about hospitalized children comes after Spillers said Monday that a 16-year-old COVID-19 was on a respirator at Huntsville Hospital.
“I challenge people who resist wearing face covers to think about this the next time they resist wearing face covers,” said Spillers. “Anyone could have COVID, anyone could give COVID to someone else. You can give COVID to a child. If thinking of you accidentally giving someone a COVID who is trying to cope with cancer isn’t enough of a reason to cover your face, I don’t know what it is.
“I think it is time to think of others when you are reluctant to wear face covers.”
Madison County, like much of the state, is seeing a sharp increase in the number of COVID-19 cases. Spillers said there are 121 patients in the Huntsville Hospital Health System in northern Alabama, including 36 on the hospital’s main campus in downtown Huntsville.
Elsewhere in the system, there are 19 patients at Decatur-Morgan Hospital, 19 at Marshall Medical South in Boaz, 14 at Marshall Medical North in Guntersville, 11 at Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield and eight at Athens-Limestone Hospital.
In total, there have been 1,057 COVID-19 cases in Madison County since March, but 304 of those cases were reported in the past seven days.
Childhood infection, however, adds a new element to the gross number of cases in northern Alabama.
“This is the first time we’ve seen that in our community,” said Spillers, noting that Huntsville Children’s Hospital helps cover the area between Nashville and Birmingham. “Those patients are doing well (elsewhere). They are in the hospital. We have to look at them. I am very sure that the results will be good for those children. “
Spillers said it is not known where the children contracted the virus and was not suggesting that their parents “did something wrong.”
“I think it is just the direct result of more COVID in the community and more people getting involved with and infecting children,” he said. “The children did not go out looking for this. Someone brought them to you.
Then Spillers returned to his continuous push to mask himself.
“We have to take care of our children,” he said. “These children are not capable of making these decisions. Adults who make the decision to be around children without masks are putting those children at risk. “
