Coronavirus (COVID-19) What to Do if Your Child Is Sick

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association are collaborating to collect and share all publicly available data from states on child COVID-19 cases. The definition of “child” case is based on varying age ranges reported across states (see report Appendix for details and links to all data sources).

Reported COVID-19 cases among children spiked dramatically in 2022 during the Omicron variant winter surge, peaking at 1,150,000 cases reported in one week. For the week ending May 26th, more than 112,000 additional child COVID-19 cases were reported, a doubling of case counts from the four weeks prior. This marks the seventh consecutive weekly increase in reported child cases.

Almost 13.4 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic according to available state reports; almost 376,000 of these cases have been added in the past 4 weeks. Nearly 5.5 million reported cases have been added in 2022.

The age distribution of reported COVID-19 cases was provided on the health department websites of reporting states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Since the pandemic began, children represented 18.9% of total cumulated cases. For the week ending May 26th, children were 16.2% of reported weekly COVID-19 cases (children, under age 18, make up 22.2% of the US population). A smaller subset of states reported on hospitalizations and mortality by age. There is an urgent need to collect more age-specific data to assess the severity of illness related to new variants as well as potential longer-term effects. It is important to recognize there are immediate effects of the pandemic on children’s health, but importantly we need to identify and address the long-lasting impacts on the physical, mental, and social well-being of this generation of children and youth.

This course will give an insight into what to do when you find yourself in a place where a child is showing signs of COVID-19 virus.