Pediatric covid cases, hospitalizations rise due to Omicron variant

Delaware- The Covid19 Omicron variant is causing an uptick of infections and hospitalizations in younger children. Nemours Children’s Health hospital says, they are not only seeing more cases per day of younger children presenting to the hospital, but more of those cases are becoming severe and requiring intensive care. they have seen an increase of cases and severe hospitalizations in children suffering from the Omicron variant.

Dr.Jonathan Miller tells us, during the previous Delta variant wave, his hospital would see one or two children come in per day but now those numbers are growing with no sign of slowing down.

“This past week it’s been over 20 kids every day and we had a day where we approached 30 patients with covid,” he said.

Dr. Miller believes that part of the surge can be explained, by children being the largest group of Americans currently un-vaccinated. Children under the age of 5 currently have no approved vaccines or boosters.

“This is the most vulnerable population right now to covid in our country and we are seeing a lot of spread in those age groups because of it,” Miller said.

Dr.Miller says the public should understand that while the Omicron Variant is being reported as a milder variant, that label requires some caveats, especially for children.

“Those numbers are from vaccinated adults in the United Kingdom and it does not pertain to children they were not studied,” Dr. Miller said.

Anecdotally, it seems this variant is the most dangerous for children from what we are seeing and continue to see,” he said.