There are more children in the U.S. with COVID-19 right now than ever before in pandemic
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- A doctor at Texas Children's Hospital says for the past two days, they've seen 40 kids each day coming to the hospital with COVID-19.
It's actually a slight improvement from what the hospital had been seeing, but the doctor says this fourth wave of COVID-19 with the delta variant is targeting our kids.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, last week, there were more than 251,000 cases of COVID-19 in kids across the country.
That's the highest number of cases we've seen in kids since the pandemic started.
The southern region of the United States accounted for 140,000 of those cases last week, the data showed.
To put things into perspective, back in June of this year, there were 8,400 COVID-19 cases reported in children.
It's important to note that severe illness in kids from COVID-19 is uncommon.
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Dr. Jim Versalovic from Texas Children's believes that we are seeing this spike right now because so many kids are back inside classrooms.
He says Texas Children's is at a high plateau right now, which hopefully means their numbers will start to go back down at some point.
"We've had a census exceeding 50 children and adolescents per day most of the past two weeks," Dr. Versalovic said about Texas Children's. "We continued to have numbers above 40 just in the past 24 hours. We set a new record in the past week in terms of the number of children testing positive at Texas Children's, well over 380 positive tests in a 24 hour period."
Dr. Versalovic has tips for parents to keep their children as healthy as possible during this fourth wave:
- Mask up while indoors at public places, especially at school.
- Get your kids vaccinated if they are currently eligible. All children 12 years and older are eligible to receive the Pfizer vaccine.
