With back to school in full swing, more children are getting sick with COVID-19, according to a report. The report from The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association found that children accounted for 22% of new coronavirus cases in the week ending Aug. 26. “After declining in early summer, child cases have increased exponentially, with over a five-fold increase the past month, rising from about 38,000 cases the week ending July 22nd to nearly 204,000 the past week,” the report said.
The two weeks ending Aug. 26 saw a 9% increase in the cumulated coronavirus cases in children, which totals nearly 4.8 million. “However, there is an urgent need to collect more data on longer-term impacts of the pandemic on children, including ways the virus may harm the long-term physical health of infected children, as well as its emotional and mental health effects,” the report said.
Many children are returning back to in-person learning without a COVID-19 vaccine available to them.
The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week said that from late June to mid-August, cases in people under the age of 17 increased nearly tenfold. She called on those who are eligible to get the shot to do so to protect unvaccinated children. “Communities with high vaccination coverage are seeing lower pediatric cases and hospitalizations,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at a press briefing on Thursday. She urged schools to follow CDC guidance and require students, teachers, staff and visitors to wear masks inside. But several states have resisted the CDC’s guidance, and the Biden administration has opened investigations into five Republican-led states – Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah – over whether their mask mandate bans discriminate against students with with disabilities. The Education Department did not include Texas, Florida and other states that also have mask mandate bans in the investigation because their bans are not being enforced due to court orders or other state actions.