A Boston Medical Center doctor performs a checkup on an 8-month-old while her father watches from a tent outside of Boston Medical Center in Boston on April 29, 2020.
The number of children hospitalized in the US with COVID-19 is at an all-time high, with new admissions up 66 percent in the last week.
The rise in overall cases is being driven by the omicron coronaviruses variant, which has led to a surge in hospitalizations for children. It's not clear if the variant is less dangerous in children than in people generally, though preliminary data shows that omicron waves are linked to milder disease and fewer hospitalizations.
Studies show that omicron causes milder lung disease in rodents. Mild omicron waves in humans have been seen in populations with high levels of protection from prior COVID-19 infections. The populations are expected to have less severe disease.
Even if omicron causes milder disease, it can still easily destroy health care systems. A large number of people are in the hospital because of a large number of omicron infections.
According to data tracked by the New York Times, the US had its highest single-day tally of new COVID-19 cases yet. Over the past two weeks, the seven-day average has increased by over 150 percent. The previous record was set in early January of last year, with around 250,000 cases.
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The last two weeks have seen a 14 percent increase in daily hospitalizations, and the current seven-day average is up to 77,851. The rise in hospitalizations to date appears to be smaller than would be expected based on previous variations.
The incline in children's hospital stays has increased. According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the new daily hospital admissions for children under 17 is 378. The current rate of child hospital admissions with COVID-19 is higher than ever before, with a rate of 0.52 admissions per 100,000. The previous record was 0.47.
Anthony Fauci, a top infectious disease expert, said in a White House press briefing that it's still unclear how severe omicron will be in children. There will be more hospitalizations in children because more children are being exposed to the highly transmissible virus. Many children are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID, which is a reflection of the high degree of penetrance of infections among the children.
COVID-19 can still be severe and even deadly, even though it has tended to be milder in children than in adults. 332 children under the age of 5 have died from COVID-19 so far in the Pandemic. The CDC has recorded over 5000 cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, a rare side effect of COVID-19 in children. 52 of the cases were fatal.
