Pediatric hospitalizations rising 4-fold in New York state - mostly unvaccinated.

This is alarming.

Some concerning news coming out of New York state.

The state’s Department of Health has alerted healthcare workers to a concerning rise in pediatric hospitalizations due to COVID-19 over the last month or so. See tweets below

uché blackstock, md @uche_blackstock

New York State’s Department of Health (@HealthNYGov) advisory: NYSDOH is closely monitoring an upward trend in pediatric hospitalizations associated with COVID-19. • The recent increases are concentrated in New York City and the surrounding greater metropolitan area.

and

uché blackstock, md @uche_blackstock

The sharpest rise is in New York City, with admissions rising 4-fold from the week, based on data from December 5, 2021 to the week starting December 19, 2021. • Approximately half of the admissions are <5 years of age and thus vaccine ineligible.

and

uché blackstock, md @uche_blackstock

For the most recent week, none of the 5-11 year-old patients was fully vaccinated (compared to 16.1% overall in that age group), and only one-third of 12- 17 year-old patients (7 patients out of 30 admissions) were fully vaccinated (compared to 64% in that age group).

A 4-fold increase!!

Though we don’t have official numbers yet, I’m sure this is in part to the highly infectious Omicron variant, which can most definitely infect children and young adults as well.

The majority of children that are admitted to the hospital are unvaccinated, either by choice of their parents, or they were ineligible for it (<5 years of age).

Pediatric cases of COVID are rising throughout the country. As of Dec 16, the weekly COVID case count was up to 170,000. That’s a LOT of cases in kids.

Y’all, most of this is preventable. 5-11 year old kids are eligible for the vaccine. Please get them vaccinated. The best way to protect those who cannot get vaccinated, such as <5, is to prevent them from being exposed in the first place. And we can do that in part by making sure everyone around them is vaccinated. The risk from the vaccine is far less than the risk from COVID infection, for kids and for adults.

If you have people in your life who are still uncertain about getting their eligible kids vaccinated, please share this with them!

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