Additionally, more children are being hospitalized due to COVID-19 infection.
A study made at the University of Minnesota published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics on Jan. 11, analyzed children, teenagers, and young adults have shown concerning numbers regarding the hospitalization among children, which is now nine times higher than it was at the beginning of the pandemic.
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The study examined data from more than 5,364 patients under the age of 19 and younger from 22 states across the United Stated in a seven-month period, from May to November 2020. It has shown that 2 hospitalized children per 100,000 were recorded in May, but the numbers went as far as 17.2 hospitalizations per 100,000 children in November, so there’s a substantial increase.
According to study author Pinar Karaca-Mandic, PhD, these findings are a good indicator that COVID-19 can still be dangerous for children and young adults, so we shouldn’t believe any more than children are safe or immune in the face of the virus.
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These findings could affect schools and colleges all over the country.
Now that young adults and children are more at risk in the face of the virus, it’s still questionable whether it’s safe or not to reopen schools and switch to in-person learning after a long period of online courses.
Due to the dramatic increase in cases among young adults, the authors of the study have recommended that “communities and schools should fully implement and strictly adhere to recommended mitigation strategies, especially universal and proper masking, to reduce COVID-19 incidence.”
They have also added that it will be safer to reopen schools and go back to in-person learning when community transmission rates will decrease and the mitigation measures will be followed. According to Erin K. Sauber-Schatz, an epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told The New York Times that it would be recommended to postpone the reopening of child-care centers, including elementary schools until all mitigation measures are put in place.
Additionally, there are other studies showing that closing schools can have an effect on community transmission. A study conducted at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich has come to the conclusion that taking the decision to close all schools throughout Switzerland has contributed to cutting transmission rates by 21.6 percent. Therefore, this measure was the third most important in keeping people safe and lowering transmission rates, after banning gatherings (25 percent) and closing bars and restaurants ( 22.3 percent) nationwide, as data from CNBC shows.
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