Ntombekhaya Zibi
As the nation focuses on safety issues around going back to school during this pandemic, a new report found a sharp increase in the number of Covid-19 cases among children in the United States.
There seem to have been a 90% increase in the number of Covid-19 cases among children in the United States over the last four weeks, according to a new analysis by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association that will be updated weekly.
Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice-chair of the American Academy of Paediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, told CNN’s on Monday that coronavirus cases in children should be taken seriously.
O’Leary said it is not fair to say this virus is completely gentle to children.
There were 179,990 new Covid-19 cases among US children between July 9 and August 6, according to the report.
William Haseltine, a former professor at Harvard Medical School told CNN in an interview on Monday that, “Children ages zero to five can be “highly infectious to other people. It turns out they have a thousand times more virus in their nose than you need to infect, so they’re very, very contagious.”
“In areas with rapid community spread, it’s likely that more children will also be infected, and these data show that … It is up to us to make the difference, community by community,” They called for an effective testing strategy so that communities can make the right choice about opening schools.
