Just as millions of families around the United States navigate sending their children back to school at an uncertain moment in the pandemic, the number of children admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 has risen to the highest levels reported to date. Nearly 30,000 of them entered hospitals in August.
Pediatric hospitalizations, driven by a record rise in Covid-19 infections among children, have swelled across the country, overwhelming children’s hospitals and intensive care units in states like Louisiana and Texas.
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Children remain markedly less likely than adults, especially older adults, to be hospitalized or die from Covid-19. But the growing number of children entering the hospital, however small compared with adults, should not be an afterthought, experts say, and should instead encourage communities to take on more efforts to protect their youngest residents.
“It should concern us all that hospitalizations — indicators of severe illness — are rising in the pediatric population, when there are a lot of steps we could take to prevent many of these hospitalizations,” said Jason L. Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, who tracks Covid-19 hospitalization data.
Public health officials and experts also caution that even small increases in the number of pediatric Covid-19 patients can put a major strain on pediatric hospitals and I.C.U.s, many of which are already overstretched with nursing shortages and an unusual summer surge of respiratory syncytial virus or R.S.V.
“The average pediatric I.C.U. in the U.S. has 12 beds,” said Dr. Christopher Carroll, a pediatric intensivist at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. “In a system that small, even a few patients can quickly overrun the capacity. And there are fewer specialty trained pediatric clinicians to pick up the slack.”
The strain on hospital resources for children has prompted doctors and hospital executives to plead with adults to get vaccinated and return to mask wearing and social distancing to protect children, especially those under 12, who cannot yet be vaccinated. ...
