The U.S. has seen the most significant increase since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Health experts and state officials raise alarm about a surge in COVID hospitalizations among American children, ABC NEWS reports.
After declining in the early summer 2021, child COVID-19 cases have steadily increased again in recent weeks -- just as many kids head back to the classroom. The American Academy of Pediatrics has recently published a newly released weekly report, which compiles state-by-state data on COVID-19 cases among children. In the report, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children's Hospital Association (CHA) found that nearly 94,000 new COVID-19 cases in children were reported last week, a continued "substantial" increase.
Some of the worst numbers are in Louisiana and Florida but could get worse elsewhere fast as public health officials express concerns with the highly contagious delta variant amid continued vaccine hesitancy.
"This is not your grandfather's COVID," Dr. Mark Kline, the physician in chief of Children's Hospital New Orleans told. Louisiana is facing the nation's highest rate of new COVID-19 cases with the Children's Hospital in New Orleans describing what they're seeing as "an epidemic of very young children."
"We are hospitalizing record numbers of children," Kline continued. "Half of the children in our hospital today are under two years of age. Most of the others are between five and ten years of age -- too young to be vaccinated just yet."
Dr. Marcos Mestre, the hospital's vice president and chief medical officer, said that in recent weeks, his teams have seen a "significant uptick" in pediatric COVID-19 cases. He said some children are alone in the hospital because their parents, also unvaccinated, are battling COVID-19 at another hospital.
"It's tough," he said, and places "undue social stress on the child, as you can imagine, not having the parents around."
It comes as the country's daily case average for Americans increased to nearly 100,000 cases a day for the past four days -- up by 31.7% in the last week and nearly nine times higher than the average was in mid-June. For children 17 and under, the rate of pediatric hospital admissions per capita is 3.75 times higher than it was just a month ago -- now equal to its highest point of the pandemic, in January 2021.
While severe illness due to COVID-19 remains "uncommon" among children, experts say the increased trend is concerning.The Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved vaccines for children under 12, leaving a large youth population susceptible to COVID-19.