SACRAMENTO, Calif — Following a 58% increase from last week for the average number of children taken into the hospital with COVID-19, according to the CDC, doctors are finding more and more kids are also coming down other airborne viruses.
"Since everybody was socially distanced and children weren't going to school, there were very low rates of (respiratory illness) admissions in the past year. Now that people are more out and about, we're seeing a lot of children getting viral respiratory infections," said Dr. Dean Blumberg, the Pediatric Infectious Diseases chief at UC Davis Health.
On top of COVID-19, he said respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza and parainfluenza rates in children are up from pre-pandemic levels. RSV has been among the leading causes of hospitalization in infants.
"We build up immunity over time to the commonly circulating strains that are out there. And we just didn't have that last year," Blumberg said.
Now some parents are rushing to book routine vaccination appointments for their children as colder conditions set in this winter. While children older than 5 can get a COVID-19 vaccination, there is no federally approved booster for them, nor an approved COVID-19 vaccine for children under 5 years old.
Blumberg said he expects to see a rise in hospitalizations as the delta and omicron variant spread nationwide.
"Certainly for the younger children not vaccinated — and with such a highly transmissible COVID-19 variant — we do expect a very high rate of infection," Blumberg said.
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