(Reuters) – The number of new COVID-19 cases among children in the United States has increased 40% in the last two weeks of July, according to a report released just weeks before tens of millions of American students are scheduled to start the new school year.
PHILO PHOTO: A child plays in the yard at New York Public School 321 in Park Slope District, Brooklyn, New York, USA, August 7, 2020. REUTERS / Brendan McDermid
Health experts are keeping an eye on coronavirus infections among children and teens, as officials wrestle with the thorny question of whether schools should reopen to person classes, adopting a virtual learning model as a hybrid of the two.
President Donald Trump, who is seeking a second term in the White House in the Nov. 3 election, has urged states to physically return students to classes, but health officials have cautioned in doing so in areas where cases are sharp have increased.
The new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association found that more than 338,000 children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the beginning of the American epidemic, with 97,078 new cases reported between July 16-30 .
Most of the new infections in this group occurred in states in the U.S. South and West, according to the report, which was based on data from 49 states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam.
It gave no reason for the recent spike. Testing for the new coronavirus in general has gone up in the United States and concerns about children as possible spreaders of the virus have been sparked by new studies showing they can catch it.
The American Academy of Pediatrics notes that the data showed that severe illness due to COVID-19 seems to be rare among children. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also said that children who get the virus are less likely to develop severe symptoms.
The CDC recently updated its handbook to recommend that schools reopen to some degree unless their communities experience an uncontrolled or high rate of transmission of the virus.
Some cities including Chicago and Los Angeles plan to begin the school year with online classes, while New York City, once the epicenter of the American epidemic, plans to learn at least something personal in all of its school districts this fall.
Children represent a small fraction of the more than 162,000 people who died from COVID-19 in the United States. More than 5 million people in the country are infected with the virus, representing about a quarter of the total cases worldwide.
Report by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru; Edited by Paul Simao
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