A tiny bit of light may have broken though the COVID-19 storm clouds.
The number of new cases in children in the United States did not set a new weekly high for the first time in months and the cumulative proportion of COVID-19 cases occurring in children did not go up for the first time since the pandemic started, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
which is the first time since late September that the weekly total has fallen in the United States, the AAP/CHA data show.
Another measure, the cumulative proportion of infected children among all COVID-19 cases, stayed at 12.0% for the second week in a row, and that is the first time there was no increase since the AAP and CHA started tracking health department websites in 49 states (not New York), the District of Columbia, New York City, Puerto Rico, and Guam in April.
For the week ending Dec. 3, those 123,688 children represented 12.6% of all U.S. COVID-19 cases, marking the second consecutive weekly drop in that figure, which has been as high as 16.9% in the previous 3 months, based on data in the AAP/CHA weekly report.
The total number of reported COVID-19 cases in children is now up to 1.46 million, and the overall rate is 1,941 per 100,000 children. Comparable figures for states show that California has the most cumulative cases at over 139,000 and that North Dakota has the highest rate at over 6,800 per 100,000 children. Vermont, the state with the smallest child population, has the fewest cases (687) and the lowest rate (511 per 100,000), the report said.
The total number of COVID-19–related deaths in children has reached 154 in the 44 jurisdictions (43 states and New York City) reporting such data. That number represents 0.06% of all coronavirus deaths, a proportion that has changed little – ranging from 0.04% to 0.07% – over the course of the pandemic, the AAP and CHA said.