US COVID cases among children have surged to one of its highest rates of the pandemic

Last week, the number of Covid-19 cases in children in the US reached levels not seen since the winter surge. And with the return to school, the Delta variant on the rise and winter approaching, health officials are concerned it could get worse.

After a decline in early summer, child cases have increased exponentially with more than a four-fold increase in the past month, according to the latest report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

From about 38,000 cases a week near the end of July, the week ending August 19 saw more than 180,000 cases in children, the report said.

The rise has come as 48.4% of the population is yet to be fully vaccinated, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and as the average of daily new reported cases rises to more than 151,000.

Health experts have been particularly concerned about cases among children as students return to school, many without mask mandates and without access to vaccines.
Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine was fully approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Monday for Americans 16 and older, which National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins told CNN was a “ray of sunshine in the midst of all these dark Covid clouds.”

But children under 16 still aren’t fully approved for a vaccine, and the emergency use authorizations in place only cover adolescents 12 and older.

Children ages 5 to 11 are the next group in line to become eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, and an updated emergency use authorization from the FDA would make at least 28 million additional children representing about 9% of the US population eligible to receive the vaccine, according to a CNN analysis of federal data.

But the process of authorizing a vaccine for that age group may not be completed until the end of the calendar year, US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, told CNN’s Brianna Keilar.

The timing is a problem, Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s vaccines advisory committee, told CNN, because the more transmissible Delta variant is spreading and the cold dry weather of winter months makes it easier for the virus to spread all while children are sat together in classrooms.

“You are going to have a group of fully susceptible people all in one place,” he told Jake Tapper. “That’s not a good recipe.”
And though it would be good to have vaccines for children before then, it is important for health officials to take their time in making sure the vaccines are tested heavily and deemed safe.

“You are going to be doing trials in four thousand, seven thousand, ten thousand children and then you are going to be giving vaccine to millions of children,” Offit said. “We’re moving as quickly as we can, it’s just not easy to move that quickly when you talk about doing big vaccine trials.” CNN