A White House task force report warns of dire new case increases across rural and urban areas of the state and calls for a mask mandate
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic through Aug. 27, there have been more than 476,000 cases in children, according to an updated report published by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
The report looks at publicly reported data from 49 states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam.
Children represented 9.5% of all cases, and there is an overall rate of 631 cases per 100,000 children in the population. Both of these numbers have increased since the previous report on Aug. 20, when children represented 9.3% of all cases and the overall rate with 583 cases per 100,000 children in the population.
There were 70,330 new child cases reported since Aug. 13— that’s a 17% increase in child cases over two weeks.
Of the nine states that reported testing, children make up between 4% and 13.3% of all tests. Between 2.8% and 17.4% of tested children were positive for Covid-19.
For the 22 states and New York City that reported hospitalizations, children made up 0.6% to 4.1% of total reported hospitalizations. Between 0.3% and 8.5% of all child cases resulted in hospitalization.
For the 43 states and New York City that reported on mortality, children made up 0% to 0.3% of all Covid-19 deaths and 19 states reported zero child deaths. In the states that reported, 0% to 0.7% of all child cases resulted in death.
“At this time, it appears that severe illness due to Covid-19 is rare among children,” the report says. “However, states should continue to provide detailed reports on Covid-19 cases, testing, hospitalizations, and mortality by age so that the effects of Covid-19 on children’s health can be documented and monitored.”
