US sees record number of children hospitalised with COVID-19 amid Omicron scare

Amid the surge of the new Omicron variant in the United States, children admitting in the hospitals is creating near-record numbers, with specialists lamenting the fact that most of the children have been unvaccinated. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an average of 334 children, who are 17 and under that age, were admitted to hospitals with the coronavirus disease each day during the week of December 21 to 27, which is a 58% rise than the previous week. 

Further, the pandemic's last high point was in early September, when hospital admission of children was an average of 342 per day, according to the CDC. The CDC data also revealed that roughly 14% of 5- to 11-year-olds are totally vaccinated two months after immunizations were approved. However, the percentage among 12- to 17-year-olds is greater, at over 53%. 

'It’s just so heartbreaking': Expert remarks on children hospitalisation

Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious-disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said, “It’s just so heartbreaking. It was hard enough last year, but now you know that you have a way to prevent all this,” Associated Press reported. Furthermore, Offit stated that not a single vaccine-eligible child who have been receiving care at his hospital about a week ago had been inoculated. He went on to add that among them two-thirds of the children had underlying medical conditions that put them at risk.  

According to the Associated Press, “They’re struggling to breathe, coughing, coughing, coughing,” Offit said. Describing the situation Offit said that a small number of them were even sent to the ICU to be sedated. The parents were sobbing as the doctors inserted the connection down their throat that is connected to a ventilator. He said that neither the parents nor the siblings had been vaccinated. In addition to this, over the duration of the outbreak, COVID-19 fatalities among youngsters have been extremely uncommon. According to data published to the American Academy of Pediatrics last week, 721 children in the US have died from the virus.

Furthermore, during the same week in December, almost 9,400 Americans of all ages were hospitalised on average. Many doctors also believe that the children who are currently admitted appear to be in better health than those who came in during the summer's Delta influx.  

US COVID tally

Altogether, new cases in all age groups in the United States have reached record highs which an average of 300,000 each day, or 2 1/2 times the number just two weeks earlier. As per the CDC, the highly infectious Omicron has accounted for 59% of new infections last week. Meanwhile, as per Worldometers, over 55,226,252 individuals have been affected by the disease in the nation since the outbreak, and more than 845,712 people have lost their lives due to Coronavirus. 

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