As many as 20% of all child deaths from Covid in the US have occurred during the Omicron surge of the pandemic.
Children seem to be facing increasing risks from COVID-19 even as mask mandates drop across the country, and vaccination rates among children stall out at alarmingly low rates.
“We saw a massive surge of hospitalized young children during Omicron that we didn’t see in the earlier months of the pandemic,” said Jason Kane, a pediatric intensivist and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Chicago Comer children’s hospital.
Omicron was first identified in November, and within weeks became the dominant variant in the US.