A Record Number of Young COVID Patients Watching US Hospitals-Consumer Health News

Tuesday, January 4, 2022 (HealthDay News)-Children’s COVID-19 hospitalization surges nationwide, just as students return to school and highly contagious variants of Omicron begin to dominate the country. doing.

At least nine states report a record number of COVID-related pediatric hospitalizations. Includes Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maine, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC. NBC News report.

At the Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, the number of pediatric hospitalizations is delta Dr. Jim Versalovich, co-leader of the hospital’s COVID-19 command center, surged last summer, said in a news briefing on Monday: NBC News report.

“There are already astounding numbers here because of this surge in Omicron,” Versalovic said during the briefing. CNN report. “It broke the previous record established during the August Delta Serge.”

Sequencing has shown that 90% of hospital cases are due to the Omicron variant.

In the more annoying news on Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics report A surprising increase in pediatric COVID cases.

“The number of cases of COVID-19 among children in the United States has reached the highest number ever reported since the onset of the pandemic,” the report said. “More than 325,000 child COVID-19 cases were reported in the week leading up to December 30. This number increased by 64% from the 199,000 additional cases reported in the week ending December 23. It’s almost double the number of cases two weeks ago. “

Serious illnesses from COVID are still rare in young children, but doctors are worried because the number of new cases is so high.

“People seem to be trying to downplay the importance of children’s illness,” said Dr. Mark Klein, the doctor in charge of the New Orleans Children’s Hospital. “We have been refuting the myths about COVID and children for two years, which means they are” harmless “to children. It’s not. “

As of Monday, 14 children were infected with COVID-19 and were admitted to Klein’s facility, and 3 were admitted to the intensive care unit. The three children are under the age of two. The youngest is only eight weeks old, Klein said.

Klein co-authored studyWe analyzed 915 COVID cases of children and teenagers admitted to six medical centers in July and August, released last week by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than three-quarters (78%) were hospitalized due to complications of COVID. About half needed breathing help and almost one-third were placed in the intensive care unit. One-third of the 915 patients had no underlying health problems that increased their risk of severe COVID infection.

“I think many parents have relied on the story that if you have a healthy child, your child is very unlikely to get sick from COVID. That’s not true,” Cleveland University said. Hospitals Rainbow Babys and Childrens Hospital’s pediatric infectious disease expert, Dr. Amy Edwards, said. NBC News..

“Statistically speaking, your child probably won’t get a severe COVID, but if it’s your child who got sick, the statistics aren’t important,” she said.

Edwards said she and her colleagues had “significantly increased” the number of children recently hospitalized with COVID-19, IV drip, oxygen support, and in some cases ventilation.

According to doctors, the majority of children hospitalized with COVID-19 have not been vaccinated because they are too young to qualify or their parents have refused immunity.

Klein did his work during the Delta Serge last summer.Early studies suggest that, Omicron variant Klein said the large number of Omicron cases could lead to more hospitalizations.

“Well, it’s calm” or “it’s okay” is a bit of wishful thinking, but 10 times more cases still represent more hospitalizations and ICU admissions, and unfortunately, death. “He said.

Pediatric infectious disease doctors aren’t the only ones worried about increasing COVID hospitalizations among children.

“I’ve never seen an infectious disease wipe out the country in a week or two,” said Dr. David Kimberlin, co-director of the Department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. NBC News. “The proportion of cases in my part of Alabama is like a rocket ship. It reflects how many viruses are present in the community. The number of hospitalizations will increase accordingly.”

Dr. Chesan Satya, a pediatric surgeon at the Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New York, which is part of Northwell Health, said that “literally every child” that he and his team had surgery or treatment last weekend was COVID positive. Said it was. Even if their illness was not unique to the coronavirus, they still expanded their resources.

Dr. Edith Bracho Sanchez, a primary care pediatrician at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center in New York City, has seen the same.

“We see more COVIDs than we saw in previous waves,” she said. CNN.. “And I’m worried that the worst winter here hasn’t passed, and we’re still preparing to come.”

For more information

For more information, please visit the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Children and COVID vaccine.

Source: NBC News; CNN