Delta COVID-19 is making more kids sick. Are they getting sicker than before?

The COVID-19 delta variant is driving up infections among children across the country, many of whom are too young to be vaccinated against the disease, just as they prepare to head back to classrooms this month.

After declining from April through June, cases among U.S. children rose sharply in late July, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, which reported 110,380 youth tested positive for the virus in the second half of the month, more than double the 43,033 cases reported in the first half.

California, though not hit as hard as other parts of the country, also saw an alarming jump. The state reported 13,757 cases in kids under age 18 in the second half of July, more than double the 4,835 reported in the first two weeks, according to George Lemp, an infectious disease epidemiologist and former director of the University of California HIV/AIDS Research Program.

“I am as worried about our children today as I have ever been,” Dr. Mark Kline, physician-in-chief at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, said at a news conference last week as Louisiana ordered everyone to resume wearing masks indoors. “There was a myth that circulated during the first year of the epidemic that children somehow were immune, but particularly now that the delta variant has emerged it has become very clear that children are being heavily impacted.”

Overall case numbers, though rising fast, are still less than a third of what they were last winter. In the two weeks from Dec. 31-Jan. 14, there were 382,545 infections among U.S. children, the AAP and CHA reported, more than three times the number reported in the most recent two-week period.

Two of the first Bay Area school districts to reopen have already reported a number of COVID-19 cases among students in the first few days of the school year.

And Christina Rogers, of Antioch, California, learned firsthand how fast the virus is spreading among youths. Her 18-year-old son got COVID-19 nine days ago, and though he quarantined in his room, he passed it on to her and her 15-year-old daughter. None of them were vaccinated.

Both kids have had a high fever, sore throats, headaches and lack of appetite, Rogers said, though her son is feeling better now. She has been hit much harder, with seven days of “an unrelenting high fever and nausea.” Though her kids will have immunity from the infection when they return to high school and college classrooms, she worries about how schools will fare against the fast-spreading virus.

“I think because more and more kids are getting sick the schools are definitely in for a rough time,” Rogers said. “It is so contagious.”

The sharpest increases in child cases have been seen in Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii and especially Louisiana, where Kline shared horror stories this week.

Whether the delta variant of the virus is making those it infects – including kids – sicker than earlier versions is hard to say. In pediatric hospitals, doctors say they’re seeing more kids severely ill with COVID-19 than they had before. Images of children in intensive-care beds with oxygen tubes down their throats have filled newscasts and social media.

“Just about every pediatric facility in Louisiana is full tonight,” Kline told MSNBC last week, adding that about half are too young to be vaccinated. “While we have a modest number of children admitted with COVID, it’s a very high-intensity care that these children demand.”

At UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland, infectious disease specialist Dr. Ann Petru said that not only are they “seeing far more cases than we were,” but “we’ve definitely had some sicker kids than we had before.”

Petru said the kids showing up sick with COVID-19 in her Oakland hospital are mostly unvaccinated teens with health problems like obesity, and kids too young for the shots who were infected by unvaccinated parents.

“The ones who are in have been really sick, in the ICU with a ventilator,” Petru said. “That’s not something we normally see.”

But figures gathered from states that are providing data so far don’t seem to indicate an upturn in overall hospitalization and fatality rates among children.

The child hospitalization rate for COVID-19 was just 1% at the end of July in the 23 states and New York City reporting data, according to the AAP and CHA. That’s up from 0.8% at the end of May, but the rate was as high as 3.8% among reporting states in May 2020.

Same with the child fatality rate for COVID-19, which has held steady at 0.01% among more than 40 states and New York City reporting data since last November and was as high as 0.06% among reporting states in May 2020. In California, the rate also is 0.01%, Lemp said, noting California has had a total of 28 deaths among children under 18. But five of those were in July.

Still, Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at Stanford University, said while the Bay Area is seeing more COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations among children under 18, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are getting sicker from the delta variant compared to prior strains of the virus. “It reflects the broader transmission of this virus,” she said, “and the higher proportion of unvaccinated individuals who are becoming infected, including children, especially those under 12.”

The rising number of serious infections worries parents like Karen Choury, an Oakland technology worker whose daughter, Max, at age 10, is too young to be vaccinated and will be back in the classroom Monday for the start of fifth grade.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, asked Friday about delta variant concerns at a San Bernardino elementary school that just resumed classes, said he’s “confident in the approach we’re taking at the moment” with schools.

Although Choury and her daughter certainly don’t miss the online “distance learning” that had left Max feeling isolated and depressed in the last school year, she fears the required face masks won’t be enough to stop the virus from spreading in classrooms and wishes at least temporary remote instruction were still an option. Her 76-year-old mother-in-law, though vaccinated, lives with them and regularly requires supplemental oxygen, so any infection would put her at risk.

“I don’t know how this going to play out,” Choury said. “But we have a lot of concerns.” The Spokesman-Review