Pediatric admissions associated with the disease quadrupled in the US city, between the week of 5 December and that of December 19th. Half concerns children under 5 years old.
Le Monde with AFP
The Omicron variant of SARS-COV-2 continues to spread to the United States. In New York, the health authorities find an increase in the number of hospitalized children related to COVID-19, while the White House promised Sunday, December 26 to quickly solve the shortage of tests in the country.
The State Department of New York State “closely monitors an upward trend in pediatric hospitalizations associated with COVID-19”, according to a release published on Friday. “The strongest increase concerns the city of New York with admissions that have quadrupled” between the week of 5 December and that of December 19, is it specified. Half of these admissions relates to children under 5, therefore, who are not yet aged to be vaccinated.
The number of COVID-19 cases in the country continues to increase, with nearly 190,000 new daily cases over the last seven days, according to the numbers of Johns-Hopkins University. The arrival of the new variant of the coronavirus, and the end-of-year holidays, synonymous with travel and family reunions, provoked a rush on tests in the United States, where it is difficult in some places to obtain it .
The scarcity of tests “soon corrected”
The d r Anthony Fauci, the main counselor of the White House in the fight against the pandemic, assured that this shortage would soon be resolved. “One of the problems now is that [tests] will not be totally available for each before January”, said the epidemiologist to the ABC chain . “But we are tackling the problem of testing, and that, very soon, will be corrected,” he continued, also recognizing his frustration in the face of these supply problems.
President Joe Biden has resolved last week to announce massive federal testing of testing: 500 million kits, which will be distributed for free to who will make the request. But these tests will only be delivered from January, which supplies critical criticism against the White House, whose strategy for the fight against CVIV-19 has been concentrated especially on vaccination.
The American Executive spokesman Jen Psaki was questioned on December 6, a few days after that I had been detected for the first time in the United States, about the difficulty of accessing the tests in the country . She was content to ironize: “We should send a free test to all Americans, that’s it?”
The d r Fauci has also expressed on the issue of Omicron and its dangerousness. Recognizing how much the variant is “extraordinarily contagious”, however, he hailed the study data in South Africa and the United Kingdom who seem to indicate a lower hazardousness of cases. “When you have such a volume of new infections, it could exceed the real decrease in dangerousness,” he thoroughly alerted, fearing a clogging of the hospital system.