COVID-19 | Children’s Hospitalizations Increase With Omicron In The US, But They Were Not Serious

Pediatric hospitalizations for COVID-19 set a record in the United States, where children are increasingly being reached by the variant Omicron.

While the experts are concerned and emphasize in intensifying the infantile vaccination, the first indications suggest that it, and that its extremely contagious nature is behind the accelerated increase of cases.

Increasing numbers

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, nearly 199,000 children were reported infected with COVID-19 in the week ending Dec. 23, the last for which data is available, a 50% increase in numbers since the beginning of the month.

The only other age group where hospitalizations have reached

However, the proportion of severe cases is still much lower, in absolute terms, compared to older age groups.

There have been 803 reported deaths of people ages 0 to 18 from COVID-19 in the United States out of a total of more than 820,000 since the pandemic began.

Early research from Hong Kong based on laboratory tests with tissue samples showed that omicron replicates up to 70 times faster in the bronchi, the airways that lead to the lungs, compared to delta, which may help explain its rapid spread throughout the population.

“I think at this point, it’s a numbers game,” Jim Versalovic, a pathologist and immunologist at Texas Children’s Hospital, the largest children’s hospital in the United States, told AFP.

“Based on what we have to date, Ómicron is not causing more serious infections, And therefore, we are seeing more children hospitalized with covid “added.

If anything, there appears to be a higher proportion of Omicron-related mild pediatric cases, a trend similar to that seen in adults, he added.

Its relative lightness could be explained by the same Hong Kong study, which showed that Omicron replicated 10 times slower in the lungs compared to Delta. A study in hamsters at the University of Tokyo also confirmed this.

But “Even if there is a small percentage of children who would have a serious illness, a small percentage of a large number is a large number”Henry Bernstein, a pediatrician at Northwell Health’s hospital system in New York, warned AFP.

As to why the rate of cases, and consequently that of hospitalizations, is increasing more rapidly in younger age groups, there are several factors that could explain it.

President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, told reporters this week that “many children are , instead of because of covid ”.

In other words, since hospitals routinely test all admitted for covid, they are detecting coincident coronavirus infections.

The vaccination rate is also lower among children ages 5 to 11, who were the last group to be eligible in November.

According to figures from the federal agency the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only 15% of this group is fully vaccinated, compared to 84% of those over 12 years of age.

Highly recommended vaccination

The message for parents, according to Versalovic, is that “There is no time to lose in getting vaccinated”, and that applies to the entire family, including adults, who could, Bernstein added.

In fact, adolescents admitted to the Versalovic hospital are

The point of vaccinating young children was reinforced by a new CDC report released Thursday, which found that serious side effects were extremely rare in children ages 5 to 11.

The dreaded cases of heart inflammation occurred even less frequently than in men ages 12 to 29.

Only the little ones from 0 to 5 years old remain ineligible for vaccines, with authorization expectations in the coming months.

Versalovic added that there is also reason to believe that the peak could recede very quickly in the coming weeks, as it did in southern Africa.

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