Children, COVID-19, and the vaccines
Patrick Boyle
July 1, 2021
... The number of infected children reported each week has fallen from a peak of 211,000 in mid-January to 8,447 for the week ending June 24, according to the AAP/CHA report. In recent weeks, however, the declines have slowed and even reversed a bit. Meanwhile, cases have dropped rapidly in other age groups, as adults and adolescents develop immunity through vaccines or infection, so that young children make up a larger share of new cases.
Of the almost 600,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the United States in just over 17 months, about 325 have been people under the age of 18 ...
But in the context of diseases associated with children, COVID-19 causes more deaths and hospitalizations than several viral diseases that have been deemed severe enough to prompt the development of vaccines (such as chickenpox), and it appears to be surpassing the flu ...
The flu typically kills about 100 children a year, with totals ranging from 39 to 199 in recent years ... At current rates, child deaths related to COVID-19 stand at more than 200 a year ...
One theory for the relatively low number of children infected so far is that many were shielded from the virus by the widespread closing of schools and other group activities for about a year after the start of the pandemic ...
https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/children-covid-19-and-vaccines
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