Least Vaccinated States Lead Spike in Children's Cases, Leaving Some Hospitals Stretched
Source: New York Times
Just as millions of families around the United States navigate sending their children back to school at an uncertain moment in the pandemic, the number of children admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 has risen to the highest levels reported to date. Nearly 30,000 of them entered hospitals in August. Pediatric hospitalizations, driven by a record rise in coronavirus infections among children, have swelled across the country, overwhelming children’s hospitals and intensive care units in states like Louisiana and Texas.
Children remain markedly less likely than adults, especially older adults, to be hospitalized or die from Covid-19. But the growing number of children entering the hospital, however small compared with adults, should not be an afterthought, experts say, and should instead encourage communities to take on more efforts to protect their youngest residents.“It should concern us all that hospitalizations — indicators of severe illness — are rising in the pediatric population, when there are a lot of steps we could take to prevent many of these hospitalizations,” said Jason L. Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, who tracks Covid-19 hospitalization data.
Public health officials and experts also caution that even small increases in the number of pediatric Covid-19 patients can put a major strain on pediatric hospitals and I.C.U.s, many of which are already overstretched with nursing shortages and an unusual summer surge of respiratory syncytial virus or R.S.V. “The average pediatric I.C.U. in the U.S. has 12 beds,” said Dr. Christopher Carroll, a pediatric intensivist at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. “In a system that small, even a few patients can quickly overrun the capacity. And there are fewer specialty trained pediatric clinicians to pick up the slack.”
The strain on hospital resources for children has prompted doctors and hospital executives to plead with adults to get vaccinated and return to mask wearing and social distancing to protect children, especially those under 12, who cannot yet be vaccinated. “What really protects children are the interventions directed at the rest of society,” said Dr. Thomas Tsai, an assistant professor in the health policy department at Harvard University. State-level vaccination coverage appears to be making a difference. States with the highest vaccination rates in the country have seen relatively flat pediatric hospital admissions for Covid-19 so far, while states with the lowest vaccine coverage have child hospital admissions that are around four times as high.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/09/us/covid-children-cases-icu.html
This is just sad and is preventable.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Poor kids! 
which I don't think we have complete data on yet, and may not for years.
It's shocking how people on the right don't seem to give a damn about humanity so long as they can hang on to a modicum of power and perceive they've owned some libs (which they don't).
This is a war and apparently Republicans are not patriotic enough to participate for America.
KY..........
