Corona Virus Cases Have Increased By 32% In The Past Two Weeks
Nikki Attkisson | Last Updated : November 25, 2021According to fresh figures that were published on Monday, 22nd November 2021 by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Coronavirus infections in children have gone up by as much as 32% in the past couple of weeks.
Corona Virus Cases Have Increased By 32%
For the past week that ended on 18th November, the number of Covid 19 infections in children accounted for over a quarter of the total number of fresh Covid 19 cases. In the past week alone, there were 141,905 fresh Coronavirus infections amongst children. Children make up 22% of the country’s total population.
At the start of the Covid 19 pandemic in America in early 2020, infections in children accounted for less than 3% of the total reported Coronavirus infections. Ever since then, until now, over 6.8 million children have been infected with the Covid 19 virus.
Coronavirus infection cases have been showing a significant upward trend in every age group in the past few weeks. These numbers had steadily gone down after an initial surge during the summer months, but now seem to have returned to the same level that was last experienced in August 2021.
During his appearance on CNN’s show “State of the Union” on Sunday, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that this surge was not totally unexpected as there is a lot of viruses that are still circulating around.
Dr. Fauci further added that the vaccination of millions of people is still pending, which makes the virus more dynamic and potentially dangerous for the unvaccinated population coupled with the fact that the resultant infections could also spill over to the vaccinated population as no vaccine can claim to be 100% effective.
According to an AAP report, the number of Covid 19 infections amongst children would still be considered “extremely high” as the last week was the 15th consecutive week wherein the number of Covid 19 cases amongst children has been more than 1,00,000.
However, the good news is that the chances of children needing hospitalization for Covid 19 treatment is still slim in comparison with adults as the statistics of states that have reported cases of Covid 19 positive children needing hospitalization to suggest that kids make up for anywhere between 1.7% to 4% cases of total Covid 19 hospitalizations. These stats have remained fairly consistent through the entire course of the ongoing pandemic.
As per a report by AAP, only a tiny percentage of Coronavirus cases amongst children result in death, and in states that have reported child deaths due to Covid 19, the statistics have been anywhere between 0.00% to 0.25% only. However, as per the data released by the, 939 children have lost their lives to Covid 19 in the United States of America since the beginning of the pandemic.
Even though children remain the least vaccinated section of the country’s population, kids in the age group of 5 to 11 years have now been authorized to get the Pfizer vaccine, which is shown to be over 90% effective against the indicative disease. These children made up for over 42% of the total vaccinations in the past two weeks.
In one of the editorials that were published in the previous week, vaccine experts Dr. Jeffrey Gerber and Dr. Paul Offit have urged all the parents to get their kids vaccinated as, without a vaccine, most young kids are likely to contract the infection at some point in time.
They further added that although most kids only experience mild symptoms, some might get very sick or even die, so children’s vaccination is not to be taken lightly.
With over 15 years as a practicing journalist, Nikki Attkisson found herself at Powdersville Post now after working at several other publications. She is an award-winning journalist with an entrepreneurial spirit and worked as a journalist covering technology, innovation, environmental issues, politics, health etc. Nikki Attkisson has also worked on product development, content strategy, and editorial management for numerous media companies. She began her career at local news stations and worked as a reporter in national newspapers.