Covid cases among children surge in US

As millions of children are heading back to schools across the United States, thousands of them are testing positive for Covid-19. More than 250,000 children had fresh cases of Covid-19 in the last week of August, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) said in a report published on Wednesday.

This is the highest weekly rate of new paediatric cases since the Covid-19 pandemic began.

Data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that children’s hospitals are straining under the surge in fresh Covid-19 cases. About 2,500 children were hospitalised with Covid-19 in the week up to September



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The CDC report also implied that over 55,000 youngsters have been hospitalised with Covid-19 through August 2020, who had no prior medical history. Though the deaths related to the infections are still not rampant, yet, approximately 520 children had died due to Covid-19 as of Wednesday.

The CDC released a report on September 3 that showed a five-fold increase in child hospitalisation rates because of the Delta variant. In the same June-August time period, hospitalisations were 10 times higher for children under the age of four and for those between the ages of 12 to 17.