As omicron became the dominant variant this winter, young children in the United States were hospitalized at a higher rate than they were during the delta surge. This is according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study found that at the peak of the omicron wave, newborns and other children under the age of five were hospitalized at a rate five times higher than during the delta wave, despite the fact that few deaths were reported. During the omicron spike, hospitalizations for infants under six months were nearly six times higher.
According to experts, Omicron is a more highly transmissible strain that infected more people of all ages, including more little children. The omicron wave, however, did not result in more serious infections than earlier types; the percentage of hospitalized children who wound up in the intensive care unit was lower during the omicron wave than during the delta wave, which began last summer and lasted through the fall and winter.
According to the CDC analysis, omicron infected many more children under the age of five, and the significantly larger number of infected youngsters resulted in three and a half times more admissions to the pediatric ICU.
According to the report, around 63 percent of those hospitalized youngsters had no underlying medical issues, and 44 percent were newborns under the age of six months.
Experts believe that, in addition to omicron’s transmissibility, the more sensitive upper airways of infants and very young children are another explanation for the increase in hospitalizations.
“If you’re dealing with a variant that has a propensity for upper airway infections, naturally you’re going to see more symptomatic disease in younger children,” explained Mark Kline, the physician in chief and chief medical officer at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, who did not participate in the CDC study. “They start out with an airway that is narrower and much more easily blocked by inflammation.”
Children’s Hospital hospitalized more infants and children with croup-like symptoms, such as barking coughs and ragged breathing, during the omicron wave, but considerably fewer children with covid pneumonia, according to Kline. Despite the fact that upper airway infections are frequently easier to treat and more prevalent, the hospital nevertheless had a lot of patients in the ICU, and several kids died during the winter surge, he said.
Another reason for the high hospitalization rate could be that newborns and other young children are the only group in the United States that are not yet vaccinated. Adults and older children in their immediate vicinity should be vaccinated to protect them, according to the CDC. Pregnant women are also encouraged to get vaccinated, both to protect themselves and to pass that protection on to their unborn children.
Efforts to prevent sickness in young children are especially critical since some children — even those who do not have severe covid-19 — may develop MIS-C, or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, later in life. In severe circumstances, MIS-C can lead to hospitalization and death.
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are two pharmaceutical companies working on vaccines for children under the age of five. The FDA, which is responsible for approving them, is awaiting evidence from Pfizer on the efficacy of a three-dose vaccine for children aged six months to five years, which might be ready in mid-April.
Despite the rise in pediatric hospitalizations during the omicron outbreak, several hospitalization metrics improved, in part because the variant did not cause as much severe disease as previous variants.
During omicron, hospital stays for newborns and other young children were marginally shorter, averaging one and a half days compared to two days during the peak of the delta wave. During omicron, 21% of hospitalized children under the age of 5 required intensive care, compared to 27% during the peak of the delta surge.
The week of Jan. 8, when there were 14.5 per 100,000 newborns and other children under the age of 5, hospitalizations among young children soared. When the delta variant peaked in early September, it was almost five times higher than the hospitalization rate of 2.9 per 100,000 children in that age group, according to the CDC research.
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