With COVID variant, more children hospitalized

There is a new report out this week that will probably cause increased COVID concern for those with children, grandchildren, young nieces and nephews: in NY City, which could be a harbinger of things to come for other parts of the country, including kid-friendly South Texas — pediatric admissions for COVID have recently seen a five-fold increase, close to double the number in D.C. (Source: CNN.)

Across the U.S., pediatric COVID admissions are up 35% in the past week.

Physicians and pediatricians quoted in the CNN story sound disheartened over the COVID move, courtesy of omicron, which now lays claim to more children in its long line of sick people.

Dr. Stanley Spinner, chief medical officer and vice president at Texas Children’s Pediatrics and Urgent Care in Houston, told CNN, “I think we are going to see more numbers now than we have ever seen. Cases are continuing to rise between Christmas gatherings, and we’re going to continue to see more numbers this week from that.”

Not to mention, New Year’s celebrations are set for the weekend.

“Now we’re going to have New Year’s on top of that this coming weekend, with more people getting together — more exposures and then those numbers will continue to climb,” Spinner said.

According to the CNN story, the delta variant infected more children than previous variants, but omicron seems like a complete game changer.

Dr. Spinner, with Texas Children’s Pediatrics, told the news outlet: “What’s concerning on the (pediatric) side is that, unlike the adults — where they're reporting for the number of adults getting infected relatively low numbers getting hospitalized — what we’re really seeing, we think, is an increasing number of kids being hospitalized.”

What lies ahead when schools get set to re-open? Who knows.

For children 5 and over, vaccines are available. Trouble is, too many parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children against COVID, despite the appearance of omicron and the fact that some docs like Spinner see little evidence that it’s symptoms are milder than delta.

Again, from the CNN story, quoting Dr. Spinner: “We do everything we can to keep a child out of the hospital. So if they’re admitted to the hospital, then that means that they're already pretty sick.”

The kids need oxygen, said Spinner, because most suffer from some sort of respiratory problem.

If only … Spinner said that virtually all of the children he sees admitted to the Houston-based hospital are either unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated (two shots).