Despite children from infancy to 17 years old accounting for the greatest number of new COVID-19 cases in Chicago, the good news is they aren’t being hospitalized or dying from the virus.
During the last week, according to reports, children made up the majority of Chicago's daily COVID cases. Recent data indicates those in the infant to 17-year-old age group are now making up the most coronavirus cases in the city when compared to other ages.
However, at the same time, members of this age group are not becoming hospitalized or dying from the virus, according to Dr.Allison Arwady, Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner. She said that while there are more cases being found in children at this time, this is likely because of the fact that children 11 years old and younger are not currently able to get the vaccine and the vaccine has only been available for a short time for children ages 12 to 15 years old.
"These numbers go down really very much in line with vaccination rates, but we haven't had hospitalizations," Arwady said yesterday."We've averaged zero kids getting hospitalized with COVID, certainly not deaths."
Chicago ‘s average number of daily COVID cases has been reported to be 289, based on a seven-day rolling average. Those between the ages of 0 and 17 are reporting 63 average cases per day in the city. This is the largest number of average cases in any age group in the city. The next highest reported average has been found in the 18- to 29-year-old age group, who are reporting an average of 59 new cases per day.
While we often think of children as being the most vulnerable to negative effects from illnesses and diseases, with regard to what is being found in Chicago for children recently contracting the COVID virus, this is thankfully not the case. In the city, for recent cases involving children in the youngest age range testing positive for COVID, there have been no reported hospitalizations or deaths. For cases involving children in the 18 to 29-year-old group, there have been three hospitalizations reported but no deaths.
In the U.S. children now make up more than a fifth of all new coronavirus cases (based on reports from states that release data by age), according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Just a year ago, child COVID-19 cases made up only around 3% of the U.S. total.
According to Dr. Sean O'Leary, vice chair of the AAP's Committee on Infectious Diseases this is understandable based on several factors including high vaccinations rates among adults and until recently children not being eligible to receive the vaccine, and currently only available to those at least 12 year old.
However, O’Leary says there are also other issues involved in the higher rates of childhood infection. An important one is the spread of variants in particular the B.1.1.7 variant that's become dominant in the U.S. which is more transmissible in everyone including children. However, in adults there is some evidence that the antibodies produced by the vaccines also provide protection against this variant.
Regarding, the low number of hospitalizations and deaths for children, this doesn’t mean that parents should not inoculate their children. O’Leary warns that while COVID is less serious in children than it is in adults, and particularly older adults it's also far from benign.
After the Food and Drug Administration authorized emergency use of the Pfizer vaccine for that children Chicago opened all city-operated COVID-19 vaccination sites to children ages 12-15.
Arwady says the vaccine is safe for children in that age range. “The news for children for the Pfizer vaccine for children looks really good—safety profile was great, the efficacy profile, meaning how protective the COVID vaccine was, was really good,” she said. “And the part of the study with the volunteers, there were actually no cases of COVID in the children who got the vaccine and no serious side effects.”
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