Expert: People must change how they think about Covid and kids

More than 580,000 US pediatric Covid-19 cases were reported last week alone, far exceeding past peaks, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association said Wednesday.

That’s a 78% increase over the 325,000 new cases reported the prior week. And the last two weeks alone have accounted for 11% of the country’s total for pediatric cases, the groups said.

“Of the children who have been hospitalized or go to the intensive care unit or die, about a third of them have no comorbidities. Therefore, it can occur in anyone,” Offit said Tuesday.

“This is not a virus to fool around with. This is not influenza or parainfluenza or other typical respiratory viruses. This virus can cause you to make an immune response to your own blood vessels, which means that you can have heart disease, brain disease, kidney disease, lung disease as well as liver disease,” he said.

Experts including Allen have said in-person learning should move forward, citing the eligibility of K-12 students for vaccines and that adult teachers and staff have had plenty of time to get inoculated and boosted.

“New data out of New York state during the peak of the Omicron surge shows that child hospitalization rates are on the order of 1 in 100,000 if you are unvaccinated. If you are vaccinated, a child’s risk is on the order of 2 to 3 per million,” Allen said.

“We are coming up on two years of disrupted school, kids in masks, to think there is no harm there or no loss in socialization, no impact, I think is incorrect,” he said. “The risk to kids is low and adults have had time to protect themselves with the vaccine.”

Pediatric Covid-19 hospitalizations across the country recently hit a pandemic high — at 5,018 children on Saturday, well beyond the peak of a Delta-variant-driven wave, which was 2,544 on September 10, according to HHS.

Among all ages, Covid-19 cases have exploded as the Omicron variant has spread.

The US averaged more than 747,260 new Covid-19 cases daily over the last week, according to Johns Hopkins University data. That’s about three times last winter’s peak average (251,987 on January 11, 2021), and about 4.5 times the peak from the Delta-driven surge (166,347 on September 1), according to JHU.

The country has averaged 1,715 Covid-19 deaths a day over the last week — 40% higher than a week ago, according to JHU. The peak average was 3,402 daily on January 13, 2021, JHU data shows.

As some schools return to class, others head home

A group of teachers in Louisiana are planning a “sick-out” Wednesday to protest Covid-19 protocols and severe staff shortages, demanding virtual learning return in their district and for school officials to extend isolation times for those infected from five days to 10 days.

“We are asking that our teachers take off tomorrow and stand in solidarity showing that we care about our students, and we’re not going to allow them to be put in jeopardy,” said Valencea Johnson, president of the East Baton Rouge Parish branch of the Louisiana Association of Educators.

“Entire departments are out, buses and classrooms are being combined, ancillary staff, teachers, office staff, and other school employees are covering classes to keep the school afloat,” she said. “We cannot continue to do this. Our staff is experiencing burnout and our students are not getting the education they need and deserve.”

CNN has reached out to the superintendent of the district for response.

Several of the nation’s largest school districts are returning to in-person learning while others are shifting to remote.

Other districts, such as Cincinnati, Santa Fe and Las Vegas — where the Clark County school district is the fourth largest in the country — are temporarily moving back to remote learning as they deal with teacher absences.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, is set to give K-12 schools an additional 10 million Covid-19 tests per month, according to a government fact sheet.

The administration will distribute 5 million free rapid tests to schools each month, as well as 5 million free PCR tests each month through HHS’s expanded testing program.

The number still would cover just a fraction of students. Approximately 53 million students were in grades K-12 as of 2019, according to the US Census Bureau. And according to the CDC, Covid-19 screening should be offered for students at least once per week when community transmission is at moderate, substantial, or high levels.

HHS and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are also establishing surge testing sites in hard-hit communities.

‘Get the highest-quality mask that you can tolerate’

“If you can tolerate an N95, do it. If you want to get a KN95, fine. And what the CDC has said — and it gets misinterpreted — but they’re saying, wearing any mask is better than no mask at all,” Fauci said. “But there is a gradation of capability of preventing you from getting infected and from you transmitting it to someone else. So we should be wearing the best possible masks that we can get. That’s a fact.”

In Chicago, the department of public health announced the distribution of 1.9 million KN95 masks this week.

More than 100 community-based organizations including churches and libraries are helping to distribute the masks, an upgrade from many of the cloth masks being used, said the Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health Dr. Allison Arwady.

“We know a lot of people, frankly even a 50 cents or $1 mask is just one extra cost at a time that is difficult,” Arwady said.