Covid cases among children have spiked dramatically across the US during the Omicron variant surge…reports Asian Lite News
More than 2.9 million child Covid cases have been added in the US in the past 4 weeks, and over 12.3 million children in the country have been infected since the onset of the pandemic, according to the latest report of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children’s Hospital Association.
Covid cases among children have spiked dramatically across the US during the Omicron variant surge, Xinhua news agency reported.
Almost 4.5 million child cases were reported since the beginning of January. For the week, ending February 10, nearly 300,000 additional child Covid cases were reported, according to the report published late Monday.
This marks the 27th week in a row when child Covid-19 cases in the US are above 100,000. Since the first week of September, there have been nearly 7.3 million additional child cases, according to the AAP.
“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 recognise 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,” said the report.
Biden’s free Covid-19 tests
US President Joe Biden’s plan to ship 500 million free coronavirus tests to Americans was largely lauded, but those who serve the nation’s most vulnerable said the tests should have been distributed more equitably, according to a report in The Washington Post.
An estimated 64 million Americans live in multi-generational households. According to the most recent data available, a disproportionate number are people of colour with many of them working in essential jobs in cities and communities where the pandemic has hit the hardest, Xinhua news agency reported citing the Washington Post report.
Myron Quon, executive director of Pacific Asian Counselling Services, which serves the immigrant community in Los Angeles, said four tests for families in vulnerable communities “is just not sufficient. Not even close.”
The Biden administration said it came up with offering four tests per household by looking at the number of tests first available for distribution and dividing that by the total number of US households, which is around 122 million, according to the report.
Of the more than 900,000 people in the US killed by Covid since the start of the pandemic, Black, Latino and Native Americans represent an oversize share, with death rates 60 to 90 per cent higher than that of White Americans, according to a Washington Post analysis of Covid deaths.