Hospitalizations of children due to covid – 19 have reached their highest level in the United States since the country began monitoring pediatric cases about a year ago.
Towards the end of August, the average number of admissions per day was around 300 cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Doctors warn that the situation could worsen as schools are starting the school year and the delta variant, which has spread throughout the country, is transmitted much faster than the others.
And although the pediatric mortality rate is less than 1%, the most serious problem, experts say, are the consequences that the virus can cause in minors.
Among them, the syndrome and nflammatory m ultisystemic (PIMS, also known as SIMP or MISC-C), which can damage the heart of children, as well as their digestive, nervous and respiratory systems.
Pediatrician Christina Propst recounts in first person her experience treating children with covid – 19 and the situation that you live in the Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex in the world.
“What I see in children with covid scares me. Some of my patients have required intensive care and in recent weeks I have seen pediatric deaths at the Texas Medical Center.
Those deaths are devastating, especially when you see the suffering he must go through a child intubated for a long period of time.
The problem is that delta is affecting more children than other variants . In fact, at Texas Children’s Hospital a third of children admitted for covid require intensive care.
That very often means they need support respiratory. It is really heartbreaking to see children intubated by covid.
I would not have said this a year ago when we had the alpha variant, but that was nothing compared to what we are experiencing now.
The pediatric cases nationwide have quadrupled in the last month in the United States and one of the reasons is that the variant delta is much easier to transmit.
A second reason is that children are not being vaccinated. On the one hand, those under 19 years do not qualify to receive the vaccine and, on the other hand, many adolescents have not been vaccinated. That is a big problem.
And the third reason for the increase in covid in children is that many adults do not use the mask .
They walk around as if nothing was happening, without being aware that they could be asymptomatic and, therefore, could infect their children or other children.
I wish more people could see what pediatricians who work on the front line they are watching right now. It is simply tragic, heinous, devastating.
I feel the same way that many pediatricians feel. I feel a combination of extreme pain, anger and frustration, because the death of a child by covid is completely avoidable.
If you have a child older than 12 years, you must vaccinate . It’s like when you demand that they wear a seat belt in the car so their life is not in danger.
I have seen parents who have lost their children and that they beg people to get vaccinated to spare other families the pain they are feeling.
I remember the case of one of my patients, a baby of just five weeks who was diagnosed with covid and whose mother, unfortunately, also had the disease.
It is a family with other children to care for, few financial resources and whose native language is not English. Fortunately that baby has done well and is now at home.
But other children, unfortunately, experience very serious sequelae as a reaction inflammatory multisystem that can damage the heart, lungs, kidneys and other organs.
We are certainly seeing a rebound in these cases and many people do not know it. If a child has myocarditis and is infected with COVID, they could suffer heart failure.
In other cases, they may have kidney failure that requires dialysis after being infected with COVID.
I would say that apart from death, those are some of the possible more serious consequences that can cause the disease.
There is also the long-lasting covid , which in children has taken much longer to be recognized compared to the adult population, largely because children do not speak to the media, do not vote and do not make donations to politicians.
If we pay attention to what is happening or with children who have prolonged covid, we find that they are experiencing fatigue, headaches, mental confusion, sleep disturbances, malaise, changes in smell and taste.
Some of these children have developed a severe depression .
One of the things more worrying is that the covid may cause repercussions in the coming decades with consequences that we do not even know today .
The the picture is getting complicated. About half of the covid tests I did in a single week came back positive. That’s a positivity rate of the 50% only in my query.
And that was before the school year started at the end of August.
Lo What I have seen is that the opening of schools has done nothing more than put gasoline on the fire because it is accelerating the rate of positivity among children, at least here in Houston.
It is really scary when the The world’s largest medical center, the Texas Medical Center, is on the verge of being overwhelmed.
The The intensive care unit at Texas Children’s Hospital is full and that affects other children who may need intensive care because they have had an accident or have developed, for example, bacterial meningitis. What do you do with them?
A similar situation is also occurring in other parts of the United States.
In one week of August, just in one week, they were diagnosed 180. 12 new cases of pediatric covid in the country.
And many people do not love each other vaccinate despite what we are experiencing. Here in Texas, just the 73% of people are vaccinated with both doses. At this point that’s cruel.
People should take this seriously for children. Right now, they are the most vulnerable because older people can get a third dose.
On the other hand, children cannot even receive their first dose if they are under 12 years. Therefore, for me the most important thing is that all the people who can get vaccinated, do so .
One would think that is obvious, but apparently it has to be shouted from the roofs of all buildings.
Our last hope right now is that people wear masks and that behave as responsible adults .
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