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Nearly 100,000 young people tested positive for coronavirus in the last two weeks of July as school districts in the US plan to reopen during the pandemic.
But Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted that children are immune to the virus.
Asked on Monday whether infections in young people give him any breaks, he said: ‘No. There can be a case, a small, a small fraction of death, a small fraction, and they get much better. “
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Last week, social media platforms forced Mr Trump and his campaign to remove videos from their accounts in which the president claimed that children were “virtually immune” to the virus, which is false.
Asked if he still believes that, the president said: ‘For the most part, yes, I think they are doing very well. They do not catch it so easily … They do not transport it or pass it on to other people, or certainly not so easily. “
A report published by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Association of Pediatric Hospitals discovered a 40 percent increase in Covid-19 cases among young people within that time, when the nation’s confirmed infections peaked at more than 4 million. Confirmed cases reached more than 5 million within the next two weeks.
At least 86 children in the U.S. have died from the disease since May, according to the report. More than 163,000 people have died from Covid-19-related illness, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The report’s release follows the president’s false claim last week that children were “almost immune” or “virtually immune” to the virus, a claim he appeared to make during a White House briefing by say that children are capable of ‘throwing it away’ ”and are less likely to get sick compared to adults. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health experts have found that children are equally vulnerable to the transmission of the virus.
Facebook removed video of its comments, the platform said the company violated “policies surrounding harmful Covid traffic information”.
Twitter also revealed the president’s campaign account to delete the video, which the president shared to his account.
“The original @TeamTrump tweet is in violation of Covid-19’s misinformation rules, and we have requested removal,” a Twitter spokesman said.
The administration has urged schools to reopen during the public health crisis following adjustments to revised CDC guidelines underpinning the risk of transmissions among young people, stressing that “deaths among school-age children are much lower than at adults “.
But a series of recent studies on the effects of Covid-19 among children revealed the extent of the disease and how it interacts between different populations.
One CDC study shows that children aged 10 to 19 years are just as infected as adults, although children under the age of 10 are about half as likely as adults to spread the virus.
“Young children may show higher seizures when school closure ends, and that contributes to the transfer of the Covid-19 community,” the authors wrote.
High school and middle school children have a similar rate of health risk as adults, the report found.
“Household transport of [Covid-19] was high when the patient of index was 10-19 years, ”according to the report.
The CDC also discovered that Hispanic and black children are at greater risk for hospitalization for coronavirus.
Spanish children are roughly eight times as likely as white children in the hospital, while black children were five times as likely.
The CDC’s analysis of 576 children hospitalized in 14 states found that roughly one-third of those patients were admitted to intensive care units, a rate equal to adults.
Almost one in five patients was younger than 3 months old.
The reports follow the CDC’s own insistence that schools reopen, claiming that “the damage to assigned schools has been attributed to children’s social, emotional, and behavioral health, economic well-being, and academic performance, both in the short term. as long-term, are known and significant. ”
Despite inflation rates in Florida, at roughly 17 percent, schools in a dozen counties are scheduled to reopen this week. CDC guidance suggests that areas with infection rates higher than 5 percent should be closed for instruction in person.
At a reopened high school in Georgia, where a photo of a packed hall went viral, at least six students and three staff members tested positive for Covid-19.
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