Hospitals in the south and midwest say they are treating more children with Covid-19 than ever before and are preparing for worse climbs.
Cases have increased over the past six weeks, as the highly contagious Delta variant is spread mainly to unvaccinated people. This leads to more sick children in places where the community spread of the variant is high, according to public health experts.
Children under the age of 12 are not yet eligible for vaccination and vaccination rates between the ages of 12 and 17 remain relatively low, according to data compiled by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Although children are much less likely than adults to develop severe Covid-19 or die from the virus, recent data from the Department of Health and Human Services show that pediatric hospitalizations for Covid-19 are the highest point since the agency began tracking it last year, driven by states that have been hard hit by the Delta variant.
Children’s hospitals are preparing even more cases as schools reopen. They are hiring more nurses, reworking discharge protocols, speeding up room cleanings, establishing contingency plans to expand bed capacity, and preparing staff for an increase in multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children or MIS-C. A rare disease that can occur several weeks after Covid-19 infection, MIS-C can cause organ damage or even death without proper diagnosis and treatment.
It is unclear whether the Delta variant causes children to be sicker than they would have been infected with previous strains. Some pediatricians believe this is because of the severity of the cases they have treated. Other pediatricians do not believe that Delta causes more severe Covid-19 in children than the previous variants. But with Delta’s widespread spread, the number of children hospitalized with Covid-19 far exceeds anything they’ve seen in the past.