As the holiday season winds down, hospitals across the country are reporting more children being admitted with COVID-19 than before. According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the number of children hospitalized with COVID-19 has risen 52% over the past month.
In the last two weeks, pediatric hospitalizations have outpaced those of adults, according to the HHS. Cases in the United States have seen an unprecedented spike as a whole, with the CDC reporting 486,428 newly documented cases in just one day on December 29.
In North Texas, the picture is much the same. Children’s Health Plano and Dallas reported 24 children in the hospital with COVID-19 as of Monday. Across the entire Children’s Health network, over 200 children are hospitalized with COVID-19, the Children’s Health data tracker shows.
In previous weeks, only 3 to 4% of children tested came back as positive. As of the week of December 19, 12% of children tested at Children’s Health came back positive.
Doctors theorize that the spike of hospitalizations is naturally driven, with the winter season in full swing and the extra transmissibility of Omicron. “It’s winter, and this is a winter virus, and this Omicron is particularly contagious, so I think you were going to see an increase anyway,” says Dr. Paul Offit from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
However, the statistics only show a very limited picture of the situation. For example, at New York’s Northwell Health, a third of the children in the ICU with COVID-19 had preexisting health conditions. Northwell’s Dr. Matthew Harris stated that children with cancer or other immuno-compromising conditions made up the majority of those in ICU.
As for the youngest children, Harris says, “We are seeing very few young children under 5 and infants in the ICU. Their cases are overwhelmingly more mild.” He states that many children tested positive at the hospital while being treated for a completely different medical issue.
Dr. Offit, in Philadelphia, stated that almost two-thirds of children in the ICU with COVID-19 had underlying health conditions.
“We’re seeing the children recover…in general we’re not seeing children doing poorly, we’re seeing children coming in, needing treatment for several days, and then ultimately getting released,” stated Dr. Mitch Katz, the head of New York City’s hospital system.