Cases of COVID-19 are “slowly increasing” in children, according to new guidelines for health care workers released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The guide, which was updated on the CDC’s website on Friday, says children now make up more than 7 percent of all confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the US. At the same time, children make up about 22 percent of the U.S. population, the CDC notes. The number of cases has “gradually increased” from March to July, the guide said.
However, the CDC warns that the actual number of children infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may be higher. “The true incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in children is unknown due to lack of widespread testing and the prioritization of testing for adults and people with a serious illness,” the guide said.
The CDC also said that children can “spread the coronavirus effectively in households and camp settings” and that school closures and “community mitigation efforts” in the spring and early summer “may explain the low incidence in children compared to adults.”
The updated guide comes less than a week after a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association found that more than 97,000 American children tested positive for the coronavirus in the last two weeks in July – a jump of 40 percent over the previous two-week period.
Increases in pediatric COVID-19 cases occur particularly in areas where school districts have reopened and do not implement social distance or mask mandates. In the Cherokee County School District of Georgia, roughly 2,000 students, teachers and staff are under quarantine after COVID-19 cases were reported. The district welcomed students back for personal learning on Aug. 3, and moved one of its schools – Etowah High School – to distance learning through Aug. 31, according to an announcement on the school’s website.
The Department of Public Health in Georgia shares data online on the number of confirmed virus cases per day, but does not have a daily distribution per age. On Sunday, there were 1,873 newly confirmed cases in the state, the agency revealed. But a graph of general cases shows a significant number of confirmed cases in children of newborns up to 17 years old during the course of the pandemic.
In Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has ordered schools to reopen, there have been 45,852 pediatric cases of the virus since March 1, according to the Florida Department of Health. And in Texas, it’s hard to tell. The state, which recorded 6,024 confirmed cases on Sunday, does not share age distribution online through the Texas Department of State Health Services, and it is currently not tracking COVID-19 cases in schools, according to the Dallas Morning News.
There are probably a few things behind this constant increase in cases of COVID-19 in children, says Dr. William Schaffner, a specialist and infectious disease and professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Yahoo Life. “For a long time, children were kept at home and very different from other people,” he says. “Now that they are out and about and families go out in a carefree way, children are exposed – they play together, go in crowds with their parents, and now they start going to school.”
“The opportunities for exposure have increased substantially for children,” he adds.
There are currently more tests in children, says Dr. Rajeev Fernando, an infectious disease expert in Southampton, NY, told Yahoo Life. “I do not think COVID-19 has not infected children in the past – it’s just that we did not test children before, and now we are testing,” he says.
It is difficult to tell exactly what is happening in areas where schools are open that also have large numbers of the community spreading the virus, Drs. Amesh Adalja, former scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Yahoo Life. “Those kids will just get COVID-19 in the community as well as in schools,” he says. “However, it is not surprising that the spread of the community also affects children.”
“It is a pretext for disaster” in schools where social distance is not maintained, masks are not mandated and there is large community dispersal, says Fernando. “We need to open up on the basis of science and epidemiology – and you need the social distance and the masks,” he says. “Without that, there could be a pandemonium.”
Schaffner is concerned that some areas are not following COVID-19 cases in schools and warns that things could get worse if that continues. “If you do not see, you will not find, you will not know, and the virus will spread unknown,” he says. ‘You will make yourself think that not much is happening. We’ve been there. The virus will just run rampant. ”
For the latest coronavirus news and updates, follow together to https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised remain the most at risk. If you have any questions, please refer to the GGD‘s and WHO’s resource guides.
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