The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association are collaborating to collect and share all publicly available data from states on child COVID-19 cases. COVID-19 cases among US children are increasing exponentially, far exceeding the peak of past waves of the pandemic. For the week ending January 6th, over 580,000 child COVID-19 cases were reported. This number is a 78% increase over the 325,000 added cases reported the week ending December 30th and an almost tripling of case counts from the two weeks prior.
Nearly 8.5 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic; nearly 11% of these cases have been added in the past two weeks. For the 22nd week in a row child COVID-19 cases are above 100,000. Since the first week of September, there have been over 3.4 million additional child cases.
The age distribution of reported COVID-19 cases was provided on the health department websites of 49 states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Since the pandemic began, children represented 17.4% of total cumulated cases.
For the week ending January 6, children were 17.3% of reported weekly COVID-19 cases (children, under age 18, make up 22.2% of the US population). A smaller subset of states reported on hospitalizations and mortality by age. There is an urgent need to collect more age-specific data to assess the severity of illness related to new variants as well as potential longer-term effects. It is important to recognize there are immediate effects of the pandemic on children’s health, but importantly we need to identify and address the long-lasting impacts on the physical, mental, and social well-being of this generation of children and youth.
As of 1/6/22 Child COVID-19 Cases:
- 8,471,003 total child COVID-19 cases reported, and children represented 17.4% (8,471,003/48,641,190) of all cases
- Overall rate: 11,255 cases per 100,000 children in the population
- 580,247 child COVID-19 cases were reported the past week from 12/30/21-1/6/22 (7,890,756 to 8,471,003) and children represented 17.3% (580,247/3,346,656) of the weekly reported cases
- Over two weeks, 12/23/21-1/6/22, there was a 12% increase in the cumulated number of child COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic (905,587 cases added (7,565,416 to 8,471,003))
- Among states reporting, children ranged from 1.7%-4.3% of their total cumulated hospitalizations, and 0.1%-1.6% of all their child COVID-19 cases resulted in hospitalization
- Among states reporting, children were 0.00%-0.27% of all COVID-19 deaths, and 5 states reported zero child deaths
- In states reporting, 0.00%-0.02% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death
