Children are being hospitalized with COVID-19 at record numbers as infection rates across all age groups swell, marking a concerning new phase of the pandemic that initially left young people relatively unscathed.
While the number of daily pediatric admissions with COVID-19 across the nation is still in the hundreds, it is up significantly on a percentage basis and could represent a worrisome trend, experts said. It is also important to note that the figures represent many asymptomatic children who test positive after being admitted for other ailments. The number of children admitted to hospitals expressly for a COVID-19 infection is not known.
“We’re seeing … more pediatric admissions than we’ve ever seen by a very significant amount,” said Steven Michaud, president of the Maine Hospital Association. “So far, we’re able to handle it, but it is just kind of part of the overall strain where we have no beds, we have no capacity, and we’re bursting at the seams.”
Pediatric hospital admissions have ballooned in recent weeks across the United States to surpass records set during the fall’s delta surge. An average of about 670 hospitalized patients under 18 tested positive for COVID-19 during the week ending Jan. 2, up from 378 the week prior, according to federal data. The previous high was recorded in September when pediatric hospitalizations were averaging about 342 per day.
OMICRON SPURRING WORKER SHORTAGES ACROSS KEY INDUSTRIES
“A silver lining in the pandemic from the beginning is that most children don’t get severely ill,” said Dr. John Schreiber, an infectious disease physician at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. “That’s changed in that we are admitting a lot more children, but it’s not clear that it’s the virus being more virulent for children. It could just be sheer numbers of children who are infected.”
Connecticut Children’s has two to three times more patients admitted due to the coronavirus than in the last wave, but many children who test positive at the hospital often go in for other health problems, such as appendicitis or injuries. When children test positive for COVID-19 once they are at the hospital, healthcare systems call it an incidental finding.
“It could just be that there are a lot more children who are currently infected and a very, very small number of them get admitted. But that number is bigger because there are more children who are infected,” Schreiber said.
Hospitalization rates in children are rising primarily in the Northeast and parts of the Midwest, but hospitals in the South have recorded troubling upticks as well. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, which takes a tally of admitted patients every Tuesday, reported on Jan. 4 that there were 101 children hospitalized with COVID-19, up from 62 the week prior and 22 the week before that. Tennessee, meanwhile, has recorded increased pediatric hospitalizations since mid-December. On Dec. 15, there were 11 children with COVID-19 in a Tennessee hospital compared with 64 on Tuesday.
Despite the rapid increases, children still make up a small share of people hospitalized with COVID-19. Hospitalizations overall have increased about 51% over the past two weeks, according to New York Times data. Roughly 101,000 people are currently hospitalized due to the virus, but it is not clear how many of those hospitalizations were caused by the highly contagious omicron variant or the highly virulent delta strain.
The severity of cases in hospitals across the U.S. vary, but most pediatric patients are unvaccinated. Hospitalization rates have been shown to be 10 times higher among adolescents 12-17 who have not gotten their shots compared with fully vaccinated adolescents, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a study last week.
“Unfortunately, as we’re seeing with adults, children who are not vaccinated are much more vulnerable, are getting much sicker, and are winding up in emergency departments, in inpatient units, and even in some cases in our pediatric intensive care unit,” said Dr. Cynthia Sparer, executive director of Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital.
“As I do when I start my day early, I looked at our latest numbers [on Tuesday morning], and as opposed to a year ago, where we might have had two or three children in the hospital, this morning, we had 20, and some of them were in the ICU,” Sparer said.
The caseload at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital has gotten so high that the hospital has reverted to early pandemic restrictions on patient visitors to only a single parent or guardian permitted at a time.
US MAINTAINS HIGH DEATH RATE DUE TO COVID-19 DESPITE LOCKDOWNS, MASK MANDATES, AND VACCINES
Most adults, 73%, have been fully vaccinated, while nearly 38% of those eligible have gotten an additional booster dose. Children under 5 are not eligible for any COVID-19 vaccinations yet, making them acutely vulnerable to infection from the omicron variant, which has shown to outpace delta in terms of transmissibility.
