More than 311,000 child Covid-19 cases have been added in the past four weeks. Nearly 6.1 million reported cases have been added in 2022…reports Asian Lite News
More than 14 million children in the US have tested positive for Covid-19 since the onset of the pandemic, according to the latest report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children’s Hospital Association.
More than 92,000 child Covid-19 cases were reported for the week ending July 21, the second consecutive weekly increase of reported cases, according to the report.
More than 311,000 child Covid-19 cases have been added in the past four weeks. Nearly 6.1 million reported cases have been added in 2022, Xinhua news agency reported.
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, said the AAP.
“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 impact on the physical, mental, and social well-being of this generation of children and youth,” the AAP added.
Meanwhile, the BA.5 Omicron subvariant, now the dominant coronavirus strain in the US, made up nearly 80 per cent of new Covid-19 infections in the country, according to latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The BA.5 subvariant accounted for 77.9 per cent of new infections in the week ending July 16, up from 68.7 per cent a week before, Xinhua news agency reported.
Another new subvariant, BA.4, accounted for 12.8 per cent of new infections, CDC data show.
The two contagious subvariants now made up over 90 per cent of new infections in the US.
Confirmed cases contracted by the two subvariants kept increasing since mid-May, CDC data show.
The two subvariants are more contagious than earlier variants of Omicron, and also appear to evade protection from vaccines and previous infections more easily than most of their predecessors, according to health experts.