According to a new US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, there have been more children hospitalized in those states where the vaccination rates tend to be lower.
As you might know, young ones tend to get infected with COVID-19 much less than adults do, but it still happens.
In fact, in the last couple of months, the infection rates for kids have spiked, children’s hospitals filling up all around the country, especially in the states where people avoid getting the vaccine more, on average.
One new research that was published yesterday, September 3, in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Report, shared that emergency room visits and hospitalizations in general for kids testing positive for the COVID-19 virus have increased significantly from June to August!
Furthermore, only in the second half of last month, ER visits were registered to be 3.4 times higher in those states with lower vaccination numbers and 3.7 times higher in the states with higher vaccination numbers.
The CDC team stated that “Broad, community-wide vaccination of all eligible persons is a critical component of mitigation strategies to protect pediatric populations from SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe COVID-19 illness.”
The same team also concluded that hospitalization rates for kids and young teenagers have increased drastically and really fast in just the span of one summer (June to mid-August.)
This timeline also coincides with the spread of the seemingly much more dangerous and contagious Delta variant of the virus.
Hospitalization rates for vaccinated teens have been registered to be ten times lower than for unvaccinated ones and were highest in the case of young ones of ages under 4 and teens aged 12 to 17.
Furthermore, one in four kids hospitalized with COVID-19 needed intensive care – which is rather concerning.
Since the data in this study is based on hospital records, it cannot entirely prove whether or not more kids were hospitalized because they lived in communities with more COVID-19 cases and unvaccinated people or if it happened because the Delta variant caused worse symptoms.
Regardless, the study goes on to state that “The proportions of hospitalized children and adolescents with severe disease were similar before and during the period of Delta predominance.”
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky argued in a White House briefing yesterday that the Delta variant is not, in fact, making children any sicker than the initial strand of the virus.
“And although we are seeing more cases in children, and more overall cases, these studies demonstrated that there was not increased disease severity in children. Instead, more children have Covid-19 because there is more disease in the community. What is clear from these data is community level vaccination coverage protects our children. As the number of Covid-19 cases increases in the community, the number of children getting sick and presenting to the emergency room and being admitted to the hospital will also increase,’ she stressed.
The CDC researchers also wrote about the importance of following all the preventative measures available with the hope of protecting children from any more exposure to the virus.
They warned that: “Preventive measures to reduce transmission and severe outcomes in children and adolescents are critical, including vaccination, universal masking in schools, and masking by persons aged 2 years and older in other indoor public spaces and child care centers.”
