Even though less than 21% of all children aged 12-15 years are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the number seeking first vaccinations continues to decline, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
and 462,000 during the week ending June 14. Collectively, 30.2% of 12- to 15-year-olds have gotten at least one dose of vaccine so far and 20.7% are now fully vaccinated, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker site.
Among children aged 16-17 years, who were able to start the vaccination process earlier, 42.9% have received at least one dose and 34.0% have completed the COVID-19 vaccine regimen. Vaccine initiation – measured as the proportion of all individuals getting a first shot over the previous 2 weeks – has been consistently around 4.8% during the month of June for this age group but has dropped from 17.9% on June 7 to 14.3% on June 28 for those aged 12-15, the CDC data show.
Looking at the same measure for vaccine completion, 16.7% of all those who reached full vaccination status in the 14 days ending June 28 were 12- to 15-years-olds, down from 21.5% on June 21 and 19.6% on June 14. The numbers for those aged 15-16 were, respectively, 4.6%, 4.5%, and 4.2%, the CDC reported.
Fortunately, in the wake of recent vaccination trends, new cases of COVID-19 in children were down to their lowest level – just 8,447 for the week ending June 24 – since May of 2020, according to a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
New cases had been well over 15,000 the previous week (June 17), following weeks of 14,000 (June 10) and 16,000 (June 3) new cases, so the latest drop down to just four digits represents a 1-week decline of over 46% in the 49 states (excluding New York) that are reporting age distribution, along with the District of Columbia, New York City, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
The cumulative number of child COVID-19 cases in those jurisdictions is about 4.03 million since the beginning of the pandemic, which represents 14.2% of all cases in the United States. At the state level, the cumulative rate of cases in children is highest in Vermont (22.7%) and lowest in Florida (8.9%), which uses an age range of 0-14 years for children, compared with 0-17 or 0-19 for most states, the AAP and CHA said.
Severe illness has been rare in children, which is reflected in the proportion of children among all hospitalizations, 2.2% in 24 jurisdictions, and the proportion of deaths, 0.06% in 46 jurisdictions, since the start of the pandemic, the AAP and CHA said, with a total of 336 COVID-19–related deaths reported.