Omicron appears to be harder on kids than other variants.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Omicron and children: Pediatric hospitals in parts of U.S. filling fast
About 800 kids have been admitted nearly every day this week, with those in Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York hit particularly hard by the juggernaut variant.
This time last year, Claudia Hoyen, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist in Cleveland, remembers staring at an eerily empty hospital as Christmas approached. With many schools shut and activities canceled, most children had been sheltered from the
coronavirus. Today, nearly every bed is taken.
“We are in a difficult situation,” said Hoyen, at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital. “With omicron, we are now having this new surge on top of what was left over from delta.”
Add to that the normal cases of the flu, broken bones, scheduled treatments for children with cancer and other conditions, she said, and the hospital is “in a crisis.”
As the United States enters its third year of the pandemic,
forecasters are predicting another ugly winter, but this time, children as well as adults are being affected. Pediatric hospitalizations for covid are surging in many parts of the country, alongside the arrival of omicron — as of Monday, the dominant strain in the United States — with about 800 new admissions each day for the past three days.
Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York have been hit particularly hard. As of Thursday, there were 1,987 confirmed or suspected pediatric covid-19 patients hospitalized nationally, a 31 percent jump in 10 days, according to a Washington Post analysis. Since the pandemic began, nearly 7.4 million children and adolescents have been infected, with 170,000 more added to that total in the last week alone, according to
the American Academy of Pediatrics.
U.S. doctors interviewed this week said that while they are seeing record positive results from children’s coronavirus tests, the vast majority of cases so far have been mild and look a lot like the
common cold.
Indeed, several studies, including
a pair published this week from Scotland and England, suggest omicron is sending fewer people overall to the hospital — welcome news. But public health officials have been on high alert about one group, children under 5, who are the last group ineligible for vaccines in the United States. Earlier this month
South Africa reported big jumps in hospital admissions for that age group. The accuracy and significance of the South African data is unclear, but on Thursday, the United Kingdom released
data showing a bump in admissions for that age group, too. Hospital admissions ending Dec. 19 were at 3.64 per 100,000 for children ages 0 to 4 — three times the rate for those ages 5 to 14.
That trend is not yet evident in the United States. Doctors and officials at eight children’s hospitals in areas of mounting infections said most of their patients are unvaccinated adolescents with underlying health conditions, as has been the case for most of the pandemic, although on any given day, a wide range of ages may be represented.
Still, Aaron Glatt, chief of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau, acknowledged colleagues are monitoring a “signal” of a possible increase in hospitalizations of children under age 2: “It’s unknown yet whether the lack of severity that seems to be present in adults will also be true in children,” he said.
Even with less severe disease projected overall as a result of omicron, pediatric specialists said they fear more children may be admitted to hospitals in coming weeks given
the sheer number likely to be infected.
Adrienne Randolph, a critical care physician and anesthesiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital who leads a network of researchers studying the coronavirus in children, said that now is the time for parents who had hesitated about getting eligible children vaccinated to schedule the shots.
“Everybody is getting prepared for the worst at the moment,” she said.
.
