Record number of children in hospital with COVID in US
pharmafile | August 16, 2021 | News story | Sales and Marketing |
The number of children in the US who have been hospitalised with COVID-19 has hit a record high.
As of Saturday, 1,900 children were in hospital with COVID as the US, particularly areas with low vaccination rates, grapples with the Delta variant.
This accounts for about 2.4 percent of the country’s total coronavirus-related hospitalisations.
Sally Goza, former President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told CNN on Saturday: “This is not last year’s COVID. This one is worse and our children are the ones that are going to be affected by it the most.”
US health officials and top infectious disease experts have urged Americans to get vaccinated, Dr Anthony Fauci, the White House’s Chief Medical Adviser, has described the current wave as “an outbreak of the unvaccinated“.
50.5% of people in the US are considered fully vaccinated and 59.4 percent have received at least one dose, but millions remain completely unvaccinated.
A fifth of the nation’s COVID-19 hospitalisations are in Florida, where the number of hospitalised patients hit a record 16,100 on Saturday, according to Reuters.
More than 90% of the state’s intensive care beds are filled, according to data from HHS.
The rise in children hospitalised in the US comes at a time where high-ranking government officials for the two of the states with the highest number of new daily cases have fought to prevent masks from being worn in the classroom.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has threatened to pull funding to schools, and withhold the salaries of school officials, if they defy his anti-mask agenda.
The nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, came out in support of mandatory vaccination for its members this week, President Becky Pringle told CNN: “Our students under 12 can’t get vaccinated.
“It’s our responsibility to keep them safe. Keeping them safe means that everyone who can be vaccinated should be vaccinated.”
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