As the number of coronavirus cases in this country plateaus, the number of cases among children appears to be continuing to drop.
In their weekly report at the end of June, the American Academy of Pediatrics reports about 8,400 children in that week had tested positive for COVID-19, and those under 18 years of age represented 10% of all COVID-19 cases for that week in America.
This is the lowest weekly number of pediatric COVID-19 cases since May 2020, according to the AAP, which has been tracking children cases during the pandemic.
In early May, the number of children contracting COVID-19 was more than 70,000 in one week, the AAP reports. Then, by early June, that dropped to just below 15,000 children in a week. A few weeks later, it’s below 8,500 pediatric cases in a week.
Since the start of the pandemic, over 4 million children have contracted COVID-19, according to publicly-available data the AAP uses for their report, roughly 14% of the total cases in this country.
Children still make up a very small percentage of those who are hospitalized and die from COVID-19, according to the nearly two dozen states that report that data. In their latest report, the AAP found children represented between 1-3% of COVID-19 hospitalizations and between 0.0-0.24% of all COVID-19 deaths.
“At this time, it still appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is rare among children,” the report says.
However, health experts are keeping an eye on the delta variant, which is creating new hot spots around the country where vaccination rates are lower.
It is too soon to tell how big of an increase, if any, is being caused by the delta variant among children.
Doctors also want to collect more information about long-term effects of COVID-19 on children, who, because of their age, could be dealing with side effects longer.
“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 AAP states.