The number of children’s hospitalization in the United States with COVID-19 has increased dramatically since the Coronavirus delta version has become the predominant, but a new study suggests that the assumptions that the new strain is more dangerous and causes a more severe form of the disease, unreasonable. This is reported in a press release on MedicalXpress.
US Disease Control and Prevention Centers analyzed medical records throughout the country, which covers about 10 percent of the population, from March 1, 2020 to August 14, 2021. It included the period before the appearance of the delta version, the most infectious strain today, as well as the period after it has become dominant, starting from June 20.
It turned out that the weekly hospitalization of children aged 0-17 years was the lowest from June 12 to July 3, at the level of 0.3 per 100 thousand people, and then increased to 1.4 thousand per 100 thousand Week, that is, 4.7 times. According to previous studies, children aged 12-17 and 0-4 years are subjected to higher risk of hospitalization of COVID than children aged 5-11 years. However, after studying 3116 hospital records for the period before the appearance of a delta version and comparing them with 164 entries during the spread of a new strain, it was found that the percentage of children with severe symptoms is not much different and does not reach the level of statistical significance.
In addition, scientists have determined that in the period from June 20 to July 31, 2021, unvaccified adolescents more than ten times more often were hospitalized than vaccinated. Such results once again confirm the effectiveness of vaccines in reducing the level of hospitalization due to a new strain.