New Studies on COVID-19 and Children

Aug. 10, 2020

Nearly 100,000 children tested positive for the coronavirus in the last two weeks of July, a 40% increase in new child cases, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics. The Academy also indicates that while children represented only 8.8% of all cases in states reporting cases by age, more than 338,000 children – including 16,262 in Illinois (9.2% of total cases) – have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, a new Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that children are at risk of developing "severe" symptoms requiring admission to an intensive care unit. Hispanic and Black children are much more likely to require hospitalization for COVID-19, with Hispanic children about eight times as likely as White children to be hospitalized, while Black children were five times as likely. The analysis of 576 children hospitalized for COVID-19 across 14 states found that one in three was admitted to the ICU — similar to the rate among adults. Almost 1 in 5 of those were infants younger than 3 months.