US pediatric hospital admissions for Covid-19 are only 2.2% lower than their peak in early September, continuing a rapid increase since mid-December.
On average, 334 children have been admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 on any given day over the week that ended Dec. 27, according to data published Wednesday from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Department of Health and Human Services.
This is a more than 58% increase from the previous week and just 2.2% lower than the peak average of 342 children admitted to the hospital at the end of August and in early September.
Nearly 76,000 children up to age 17 have been hospitalized with Covid-19 since August 2020. They make up the lowest number of Covid-19 hospitalizations of all age groups, but hospitalizations in this population are rapidly increasing.
Currently, 0.46 children are hospitalized with Covid-19 for every 100,000 children in the United States. This is up from 0.26 two weeks earlier and near the record of 0.47 hospitalized children that was set Sept. 2.
Pediatric hospital admissions are up more than 50% in the past week in HHS regions 1, 2, 3, 4 and 8, which includes the East Coast and parts of the Midwest. Only region 7, in the central Midwest, saw hospital admissions decline compared with the previous week.