Just as young Americans are starting a new school year, Covid-19 rates among children and teens are rising to rates that have not been seen since the pandemic’s winter surge, before vaccines were made widely available.
On a state level, local leaders have noticed a sharp uptick in cases among children. In Maricopa county, Arizona, home to Phoenix, children under 12 make up one-sixth of the county’s Covid cases, and 6% of hospitalizations are children. In Tennessee, children under 18 are making up nearly 40% of cases in the state, with over 14,000 cases among children. Texas has reported 20,256 positive cases in the new school year, along with 7,488 cases among staff.
By the end of August, children represented about 15% of all Covid-19 cases across the country. This comes amid mixed messaging from several Republican governors’ on mask guidance in schools.
While most children will develop relatively mild symptoms, including runny noses, coughs or fevers, with Covid-19, some children have been developing more severe cases of Covid-19 that lead to hospital stays. Among 24 states that reported hospitalizations of children, they ranged from 1.6% to 3.6% of all hospitalizations. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that an average of over 300 children are being admitted into the hospital with Covid each day.
While Covid-19 cases among children and young adults were once rare, the more-transmissible Delta variant has made the younger demographics more susceptible to the virus.
“This virus that we’re dealing with now is a game-changer,” Mark Kline, physician-in-chief of the Children’s hospital in New Orleans, told CNN.
Kline said that as of 9 August, “half of the children that we’ve admitted have been under the age of two”.
The rise in Covid-19 cases among children is coinciding with the vaccine and mask debate. Republican state leaders in particular have been adamantly opposing mask mandates while their school districts see a surge in cases.
The governors of several states, including Arizona, Texas and Florida, have passed orders banning mask mandates. School districts that are trying to defy these state orders are already seeing consequences. Last week, the Texas supreme court temporarily blocked a mask mandate issued by counties. And while a judge ruled that Florida’s ban on mask mandates is unconstitutional, the state’s education department is blocking funds for two school districts that implemented mandates, withholding the paychecks of school board members of the districts.
“We’re going to fight to protect parents’ rights to make healthcare decisions for their children,” the Florida commissioner of education, Richard Corcoran, said in a statement Monday. “They know what’s best for their children.”
The rise in Covid-19 cases among children has increased pressure to approve the vaccine for younger children who, if under 12, are ineligible for the vaccine. Scott Gottlieb, Pfizer director and former head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said on Monday that a vaccine for children ages five to 11 could be available under FDA emergency use authorization by late fall or early winter.
Meanwhile, vaccination hesitancy among parents appears to be declining, particularly after the FDA fully approved the Pfizer vaccine for Americans 16 and older. According to an Axios/Ipsos poll published Tuesday, 68% of parents now say their children have been vaccinated or are planning to get vaccinated, up from two weeks when 56% of parents said the same.
