MOLINE, Ill. — The Verify team is looking into the data to learn more about increasing case numbers of COVID-19 among children.
Question:
More children are getting sick, but are they getting seriously ill more often, leading to more hospitalizations?
Answer:
Our research says No.
Our Sources:
Our sources are weekly reports from the American Academy of Pediatrics and COVIDNET, which provides hospitalization data from a network of providers to the CDC.
What We Found:
We looked at the AAP report from the week of August 5th.
It shows new cases of COVID-19 among kids went up from 12,102 on July 1st up to 93,824 new cases for the week by August 5th.
It also adds those totals to each state. The report found that in Illinois, 16.5% of all cases involve children under the age of 19. That's 236,051.
In Iowa, 11% of all cases involve kids under the age of 17 - adding up to 45,742.
Note there is difference in how each state reports child cases in terms of age.
But as case numbers go up nationwide, it's not leading to a change in the rate of hospitalizations. Data provided the the AAP from 23 out of 50 states, plus NYC shows 17,413 children have been hospitalized for COVID-19 to date. In the last month, even as cases went up, the hospitalization rate was unchanged at .9%.
COVID-NET takes a closer look at the hospitalization data provided to the CDC from a smaller network of providers.
It found that among children hospitalized for COVID-19, 46% had no known underlying condition. Obesity was reported as an underlying condition among 33.9% of child patients, followed by 20% having what's classified as "other disease," and 14% listed with asthma.
Taking an overall look at the numbers, the American Academy of Pediatrics reaches this conclusion:
"At this time, it appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is uncommon among children. 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."