CONNECTICUT – Just as school districts across the state are finalizing their reopening plans, a new report is coming out that children may not be as coronavirus-resistant as researchers previously thought.
Nearly 100,000 children in the United States tested positive for COVID-19 in the last two weeks of July alone, according to a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
From 16 to 30 July, 97,078 new child cases of COVID-19 were reported, bringing the total to 338,982 from 241,904. That’s a 40 percent increase.
Most of the uptick occurred in the South and West, and was 70 percent of the new cases. A major unknown is the number of children infected but not tested and confirmed.
If there is good news, it is that children in the Northeast Polder, and Connecticut in particular, had the lowest percentage increase in childhood infections.
Less than 200 children from all over New England were hospitalized in the latter part of July with coronavirus-related diseases. Although two Connecticut children died from the disease, children accounted for only 5 percent of the total COVID-19 cases in the state.
A total of 2,497 COVID-19 child cases have been reported in Connecticut since the beginning of the pandemic, out of the child population of 735,193. That is 339.6 cases per 100,000 children.
Neighbors of Massachusetts and Rhode Island did less well, with 5.9 percent and 9 percent of the cases in infants, respectively.
The rise of child cases is in line with a general uptick in cases in those states. Rhode Island reported 127 new cases Friday. Massachusetts recently postponed its next reopening phase and introduced stricter boundaries at social gatherings. Massachusetts also reported 320 new cases and 18 deaths Friday.
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