Increasing number of childhood COVID cases in Georgia.More vaccines along the way | Health

According to Schmidke, college adults and young adults have seen similar increases in case rates over the past two weeks.

Children’s Healthcare in Atlanta is also experiencing an increase in the number of cases.

“We are currently caring for 16 children in our hospital system,” said child spokeswoman Allyson Wright on Monday.

“The number of children caring for us at COVID-19 fluctuated throughout the pandemic, but we’re seeing an increase, probably because of holiday gatherings and trips,” Wright said. Told.

She said that the incidence of illness and the spread of the virus in children follow a pattern similar to that of other age groups, but overall minors have fewer illnesses and deaths than adults.

According to state data, there are few deaths in the age group under 18 years.

Dr. Ben Spitalnick, a pediatrician in the savanna, linked the increase in cases to post-Thanksgiving effects.

“Unfortunately, it started about two weeks after the Thanksgiving break, as expected,” he said on Monday.

“In the youngest patients, the symptoms are usually minimal or absent,” he said. “Teenagers generally have symptoms such as coughing and body aches, as they do with the flu. As a result of breaks from school that lead to breaks from safe COVID practice. We expect this to increase only in the coming weeks. ”

Many pediatricians expect the surge after Christmas and New Year to be as good as or better than the current one, given the potential for more social gatherings and trips during the Christmas holidays, Spitalnick said. doing.

“Our teens are very enthusiastic about social interaction, including the big unmasked events on New Year’s Eve,” he added.

Moderna’s first vaccine shipped in the state will arrive Monday through Wednesday, with all 174,000 doses sent directly to healthcare providers, according to Georgia Public Health Service officials.

The FDA granted Moderna an emergency use authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine on Friday, making it the second vaccine approved in the United States after Pfizer.

The state has already been assigned a Pfizer vaccine, and public health said this week it expects a second vaccine (60,000 doses) from the company. About 20,000 of them will be reserved for nursing homes to start vaccination next week.

Most care facilities in Georgia work with CVS and Walgreens to manage shots for residents and staff.

Officials said the 10,000 doses of the vaccine remaining from Pfizer’s first allocation of 84,000 will arrive at the Georgia facility on Monday.

There are more than 537,000 healthcare workers in Georgia, and as of Friday, the state had been vaccinated approximately 72,000 times.

“With the expected shipment of Modana and a second allocation of Pfizer vaccine, that number will more than quadruple over the next few days, with more healthcare workers, residents, and care facility staff using the vaccine. You will be able to do it, “state officials said. In a press release. “This will ensure that the vaccine is first administered to healthcare professionals who are in direct contact with COVID-19 patients or who handle COVID-19 materials.”

Public Health said it will launch a vaccine dashboard to track the number of healthcare providers registered to provide vaccines, the allocation and shipment of vaccines from manufacturers, and the doses administered.

The dashboard reflects the previous day’s total. You can find it on the DPH website. https://dph.georgia.gov

Testing of vaccines for teenagers in the United States may be completed by mid-year, but the timing is so tight that it is likely that they have not yet been vaccinated at the beginning of the fall semester 2021. Reported.

Meanwhile, vaccinations for elementary school children have not yet begun in the country, so vaccinations for this group are expected to be far from widespread, the newspaper reported.