Some countries have showed that it’s possible to reopen schools and keep coronavirus infection rates among kids low enough to keep the schools open. In the United States, on the other hand … things are not looking good.
Schools haven’t even reopened through the entire country, but COVID-19 rates among kids are rising fast. In fact, infection rates are rising faster among kids and young adults than in the population at large, after low rates among kids in the early months of the pandemic. “In late May, about 5 percent of the nation’s cases were documented in minors,” The New York Times reports. “By Aug. 20, that number had risen to more than 9 percent.”
Children, especially younger ones, continue to seem less likely to contract COVID-19 than adults. But the number of children confirmed to have the virus has doubled since early July. Kids are less likely to be hospitalized or to die than adults, but “[a]nyone who has been on the front lines of this pandemic in a children’s hospital can tell you we’ve taken care of lots of kids that are very sick,” the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Dr. Sean O’Leary told the Times. “Yes, it’s less severe in children than adults, but it’s not completely benign.”
As with adults, there are racial disparities in coronavirus outcomes, with Black and Latino children more likely to be hospitalized.
In general, kids are getting COVID-19 in places where community spread is high, but that doesn’t mean the virus can’t be transmitted among kids, as at the Georgia sleepaway camp where 76% of kids and staffers tested positive (among those whose test results were available). There were hundreds of cases there, and young kids were infected at a higher rate despite the other research finding younger kids to be less likely to contract the virus.
If the U.S. could drive community spread of the virus down and have aggressive testing and contact tracing, we might be able to safely open schools. That’s not the strategy from Trump, though. His strategy is to pretend this is all going to go away, which is going to have the exact opposite effect—as we already see in the rising rates among kids.
