Medical personnel move the body in a refrigerated truck from Wycoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York on April 2, 2020.
Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images
Covid-1 has killed at least 121 people under the age of 21 in the U.S., about two-thirds of whom were black and Hispanic, according to a new study released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study comes just days after reports surfaced of allegations that Trump administration officials were interfering with the CDC’s process to publish such a study.
Researchers, including a number of CDC employees and about 30 state health department officials, said the study showed the risk posed by Covid-19 for young people, although young people do not become as ill as older coronavirus patients in general. They added that the data should be constantly monitored as schools and child care centers reopen.
“Infants, children, and adolescents are more likely to have milder COVID-19 illness than adults, with complications, including MIS-C and respiratory failure, found in this population.” MIS-C refers to multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, a rare but serious condition that appears to be associated with Covid-19.
The researchers added that “an ongoing assessment of the effectiveness of prevention and control strategies will also be important for schools and parents and other carers to provide information on public health guidance.”
Of the 121 young people who died of covid-19, 45% were Hispanic and 29% were black, the study said. About.% Of Americans were Indian or Alaskan Native, the study added. The researchers said that these groups together represent 1% of the U.S. population, but more than 75% of covid-19 deaths occur in people under the age of 21.
The researchers wrote that infants, children and adolescents were hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 and, in MIS-C cases, were represented by people from ethnic and racial minority groups.
The researchers added that 75% of the 121 people who died had at least one underlying medical condition, and the most frequent conditions included lung disease such as asthma, obesity, neurologic conditions and cardiovascular conditions.
Of those who died, 10% were younger than one year, 20% of those who died were between the ages of 1 and 9, and the remaining 70% were between the ages of 10 and 20. Learning. About half of the deaths occurred in people between the ages of 18 and 20, the study said. The median median of the 121 people who died was 16 years old, the researchers said.
The researchers collected data from 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands from February 12 to July 31. They noted some limitations of the study. The researchers said it was possible that not all deaths were reported due to limited testing and reporting standards. They added that the CDC is not able to obtain death certificates to verify the cause of death and it is possible that there is no standard reporting in jurisdictions.
And the researchers noted that during most of the study time, schools and child care centers were closed and children were not tested frequently, thus limiting the scope of the data.
The study has raised concerns about allegations of political interference in the CDC. Politico and other outlets reported last week that Trump allies appointed to the Department of Health and Human Services are pressuring the CDC to replace the reports published in the Morbidity and Mortality weekly reports.
Politico cited emails in which an HHS official criticized the decision by CDC researchers to classify children between the ages of 18 and 20 as pediatricians. Officer Paul Alexander said the decision was “misleading”.
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