Children now account for 22 percent of new COVID-19 weekly cases in the United States, according to the latest data report on child cases of the CCP (China Communist Party) virus.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association updated their joint report on Monday. There were 71,649 new child COVID-19 cases out of a total of 319,601 cases in the week of April 22-29. That means child cases represented 22.4 percent of the new weekly cases.
The increase in the proportion of child cases doesn’t correlate to an increase in child cases. It’s largely due to a decline in the proportion of adult cases.
One year ago, child cases only represented 2.6 percent of the total. The cumulative total of child cases is 13.8 percent.
The report is based on data from 49 states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Because state reports have different definitions of “child”—most states use the age range of 0 to 17 or 0 to 19—more specific age distribution data is not available.
“At this time, it still appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is rare among children,” the report read, but it pointed out that “there is an urgent need” to collect more data on longer-term impacts of the pandemic on children, including emotional and mental health.
According to the report, children were 1.2-3.1 percent of the total reported hospitalizations and were 0.00-0.21 percent of all COVID-19 deaths. Ten states reported zero child deaths and 0.00-0.03 percent of child COVID-19 cases resulted in death.
In the week of Jan. 7-14, which reported the most case numbers both in children and all ages, child cases were only 12.6 percent of the total cases. However, the number of child cases was 211,466, almost three times the recent number.
BY LI HAI
