Doctors express concerns over rising COVID-19 cases in children
Sep 9, 2021, 2:29 PM | Updated: 2:32 pm
SALT LAKE CITY — Doctors at Primary Children’s Hospital say they are seeing critically ill children contract COVID-19 on top of other viruses, and it’s putting a strain on families, workers and Utah’s health care system.
In the worst of winter, about 12% of all COVID-19 infections were happening in children, Now, that percentage has doubled to about 25% – approximately one in four cases.
Right now, Primary Children’s Hospital is averaging eight to 12 patients in the ICU.
“It’s not all due to COVID. It’s due to RSV trauma, but COVID is quite literally the straw breaking the back of the health care system,” said Dr. Andrew Pavia, chief of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at University of Utah Health and director of hospital epidemiology at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital.
The toll on health care workers is significant. Nurse Jacob Ferrin talked about the difficulty of watching young patients in pain and seeing their parents suffer.
“I’ve seen parents that have to sleep in the bathroom in the room because so they’ll to a day or two with no sleep, because of how intense the environment is,” he said.
Like many hospitals across the country, Primary Children’s Hospital is stressed and they’ve had to take measures like putting three children in a room and canceling surgeries. They said it’s frustrating because these illnesses can be prevented.
Pavia added that when vaccination rates are high among adults, infection rates in children go down.
But Utah isn’t doing so well — just 50.2% of all Utahns were fully vaccinated as of Thursday, and children under the age of 12 are not eligible to get vaccinated.
Pavia pleaded with the community to get vaccinated, wear a mask when indoors and mask children in schools.