Dr Sean O’Leary, vice chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, told CNerson’s Anderson Cooper on Monday that coronavirus cases in children should be taken seriously.
“It’s not fair to say that this virus is completely benign in children,” O’Leary said. “We’ve had 90 deaths in children in the U.S. in just a few months. Every year we raise our concerns about influenza in children, and there are about 100 deaths in children from influenza each year.”
Leary said several factors have led to a recent increase in the number of coronavirus infections in children in the past few weeks, including increased testing, increased movement among children and an increase in infection among the general population.
“If you see a lot more infections in the general population, you’ll see a lot more infections in children,” O’Leary said.
“We all need to take this virus seriously, including caring for our children,” O’Leary said.
Deaths still rare
The new report uses case numbers provided by state health departments from 49 states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam.
There were 179,990 new Covid-19 cases among U.S. children between July 9 and August 6, according to the report. As of August 6, at least 380,174 cases of Covid-19 children have been reported.
As of now, severe symptoms are still rare in children with Covid-19 infections. Children accounted for between 0.5% and 5.3% of total hospitalizations, according to data from the states that record that information. Children ranged from 0% to 0.4% of all Covid-19 deaths.
Nineteen states have not reported child deaths. In states that followed the details, 0% to 0.5% of all Covid-19 children resulted in cases. However, experts worry that these numbers could increase as cases in children go up and more children with autoimmune disorders and other risk factors are affected.
“If cases count across the board, that could also likely affect more children with serious illness,” O’Leary said in an AAP news release.
The AAP called for an effective testing strategy so that communities can make the right choice about opening schools.
“In areas with rapid spread of the community, it is likely that more children will also be infected, and these data show that … It is up to us to make the difference, community by community,” said AAP President Dr Sally Goza in the news release.
“To protect everyone in our communities – children, teens, and older adults – we need to follow all public health measures we know the virus can contain. This includes physical distance, wearing cloths on the face, our hands wash and avoid large gatherings, “O’Leary said.
Children easily spread virus
“Children from the age of zero to five can be” highly infected to other people. It turns out they have a thousand times more virus in their nose than you have to infect, so they are very, very contagious, “William Haseltine, a former professor at Harvard Medical School, said in an interview with CNN on Monday.
“There’s every reason to suspect that this virus, although it can kill you, behaves quite like a cold virus, in terms of transmission. Who drives colds? Children ride colds,” said Haseltine, known for his groundbreaking work on HIV / AIDS and the human genome.
“And that’s true of almost all respiratory diseases, including colds and including colds caused by coronaviruses. And this is one of those cousins,” Haseltine added. “It even uses the same receptor in the nasal passages as one of the cold viruses. It just happens to be a cold virus that also kills.”
Needs ICU same as adults
The report looked at hospital admissions from 14 states and found 576 Covid-19 cases among children who needed hospitalization from March to July 25.
Although not many children needed care in the hospital when they were admitted, one in three had to be treated in the intensive care unit, the CDC team reported. That’s the same rate as for adults.
“Children may develop severe COVID-19 disease; during the period of supervision, one in three children were admitted to the ICU. Spanish and black children had the highest rates of COVID-19 – associated hospital admission,” the team wrote.
The CDC did not have complete data on each child, but for the 208 that the CDC was able to do a full medical template version, it found that 69 were admitted to the ICU and nearly 6% of them had to put on a ventilator. One of those children died.
Children 2 years and younger were most likely to be hospitalized. Spanish and Black children were more likely to be hospitalized than white children. More than 40% had one or more underlying conditions. Obesity was the most common underlying condition, followed by chronic lung disease.
While symptoms of Covid-19 tend to be mild in children, they can spread the disease. To bear the brunt of the pandemic, the CDC said children should be encouraged to wash their hands frequently, keep a good physical distance from others, and if they are 2 years or older, they should wear a mask when they are outside people. their family members.
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