The CDC Is Warning That Child Hospitalization Rates Are Breaking Pandemic Records

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky warned on Friday that pediatric hospitals are seeing record numbers of children with COVID-19, as the Omicron variant surges nationwide.

US coronavirus cases are currently higher than they’ve ever been, averaging around 600,000 new cases reported daily (itself an undercount), with hospitalization rates that have increased for people of all ages, according to Walensky, who briefed reporters on Friday. More than 1,200 people a day are dying of COVID-19 nationwide.

“While children still have the lowest rate of hospitalization of any group, pediatric hospitalizations are at the highest rate compared to any prior point in the pandemic,” Walensky said. “Sadly, we are seeing the rates of hospitalization increasing for children 0 to 4, children who are not yet currently eligible for COVID-19 vaccination.”

As of Jan. 1, the rate for COVID-19 hospitalizations among children under 4 was 4.3 cases per 100,000. That’s almost four times higher than it is among kids 5 to 17, who are eligible for vaccination, according to Walensky, and more than twice the hospitalization rate seen in this age group at the same time last year. She added that CDC data does show that children above the age of 4 are more likely to be in the hospital if they are unvaccinated.

Walensky pointed out that some unknown number of these cases are incidental — children who test positive when they are hospitalized for non-COVID reasons. Many of the case reports of children come from asymptomatic kids who enter the hospital for elective procedures or other illnesses, she added, complicating the picture for epidemiologists trying to figure out risks for kids.

George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology and pediatrics at UCSF, said these numbers show that COVID is widespread, is infecting children, and some proportion of them will be hospitalized. “Hospitalizations are going up. There's no reason to think that they wouldn't go up in children,” he said, adding that “children don't seem to be as unsusceptible to this as they have been to earlier strains.”