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COVID is No. 8 Cause of Death Among Children
The coronavirus has leapt over influenza and pneumonia to become the most common infectious disease that kills U.S. children, according to a report in JAMA Pediatrics.
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Overall, it’s the eighth most common cause of death in kids. Because child death is rare, the rate was just one death per 100,000 children from August 2021 to July 2022.
“Just because the numbers are so much lower in children does not mean that they’re not impactful,” Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Committee on Infectious Diseases, told Deidre McPhillips at CNN.
However, experts who spoke with the U.K.’s Science Media Centre criticized some of the study’s methods, and noted it doesn’t include data from the latest waves of infectious disease that hit in autumn. “These methodological choices result in an overestimation of rates, and make the claim that COVID is the leading cause of infectious disease deaths in children a misleading one in my view,” said Dr. Michael Absoud of King’s College London. continued on page 16
COVID-19 “caused ‘substantially’ more deaths than any vaccine-preventable disease historically,” notes McPhillips.
As of mid-January, approximately 43% of U.S. children had received at least their first dose of the COVID vaccine; fewer than one in ten have received the updated booster, McPhillips reports.
