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 The seven-day-average number of daily hospitalizations for children
between Dec. 21 and Dec. 27 is up more than 58% nationwide in the
past week to 334, compared to around 19% for all age groups, data
from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show. Fewer
than 25% of the 74 million Americans under 18 are vaccinated,
according to the CDC.
Omicron cases are expected to surge even faster across the United
States as schools reopen next week after the winter holiday, experts
cautioned.
Doctors say it is too early to determine whether Omicron causes more
severe illness in children than other variants of the coronavirus,
but that its extremely high transmissibility is one key factor that
is driving up hospitalizations.
"It is going to infect more people and it is infecting more people.
We've seen numbers go up, we've seen hospitalizations in kids go
up," said Dr. Jennifer Nayak, an infectious disease expert and
pediatrician at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
"What we are seeing is that children under five remain unvaccinated
so there's still a relatively large population of children who are
naive, so they have no preexisting immunity to this virus," said
Nayak.
Even in New York City, which has some of the highest vaccination
rates in the United States, only around 40% of 5-to-17-year-olds are
fully vaccinated compared with more than 80% of adults, city health
data shows. There is no authorized vaccine for U.S. children under
the age of 5.
Hospitalizations in New York City of people aged 18 and younger
increased from 22 the week starting Dec. 5 to 109 between Dec. 19
and Dec. 23. Children under the age of 5 represented almost half of
the total cases. Hospitalizations of people 18 and under in the
entire state were at 184 from Dec. 19 to Dec. 23, up from 70 from
Dec. 5 to Dec. 11.
Other parts of the United States are also seeing a spike in cases
among children. Ohio has seen a 125% increase in hospitalizations
among children 17 and under in the past four weeks, according to
data from the Ohio Hospital Association.
Florida, New Jersey and Illinois have witnessed an increase of at
least double in the seven-day average daily hospitalization of
underage patients with the coronavirus over the past week, CDC data
shows.
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 SLOW UPTAKE
Young children have far lower vaccination rates
than other age groups, with some families
hesitating to introduce a new vaccine to their
youngest members.
Fewer than 15% of U.S. children aged 5-11 have
been fully vaccinated since Pfizer Inc and
BioNTech's COVID-19 shot was authorized for that
age group in late October, federal data shows.
Doctors said the more severe COVID-19 symptoms
they are seeing in hospitalized children this
month include difficulty breathing, high fever,
and dehydration.
"They need help breathing, they need help
getting oxygen, they need extra hydration. They
are sick enough to end up in the hospital, and
that's scary for doctors, and it's scary for
parents," said Rebecca Madan, a pediatric
infectious disease specialist at New York
University's Langone Health hospital system.
The surge in cases occurred as schools closed
for the winter holidays. Before the vacation,
more than a thousand classrooms have been either
fully or partially quarantined due to outbreaks,
according to New York City data. The city said
it will open schools for about a million
children as planned on Jan. 3, following the
district's winter recess.
Research has shown that a substantial amount of
COVID-19 transmission among children tends to
happen outside of schools. But Madan and others
expect a new spike in cases among children from
holiday gatherings, which could disrupt
classroom attendance.
"The virus has just been able to outsmart,
penetrate beyond, what it is the parents have
done to shelter those children," said William
Schaffner, a leading infectious disease expert
from the Vanderbilt University School of
Medicine.
(Reporting by Carl O'Donnell in New York and
Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington D.C.; Editing by
Michele Gershberg and Aurora Ellis)
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