How is the Delta variant affecting children?

On Thursday, 19 August at 19:30 GMT:
In the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, parents took comfort that children appeared to be at low risk of illness and death from COVID-19. But now there are concerns that 74 million unvaccinated Americans under the age of 12 may be more likely to fall sick from the more infectious Delta variant.

From July 22 to July 29, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says nearly 72,000 new paediatric Covid cases were reported – almost twice as many as in the previous week. The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics reports that more than 350 children across the United States have died from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.

But there is some good news. A recent report from the AAP showed that less than 2% of children confirmed with COVID-19 required hospitalisation.

Even though more children are falling sick with the highly transmissible Delta variant, it’s still not clear if it is significantly more perilous to their health than earlier variants.

In this episode we’ll discuss the impact of Delta on children in the US, and ask what a response should look like.

In this episode of The Stream, we are joined by:
Dr Lucy McBride, @drlucymcbride
Internist

Dr Wassam Rahman
Pediatric Emergency Medicine Specialist, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital St Petersburg, Florida

Dr Adam Ratner, @adamratnermd
Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Microbiology, New York University (NYU)