ATLANTA — The number of children admitted to the hospital with COVID are breaking records at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and across the country.
There were 101 kids with COVID who were hospitalized at Children’s as of Tuesday, and by Wednesday there were 118—which was nine times more than there were as of November 30.
74 percent of them have at least one pre-existing condition.
"We are the highest we've ever been in terms of hospitalizations for COVID-19 right now in children," said Dr. Angela Myers of Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.
Dr. Myers said pediatric admissions of children with COVID are breaking records nationwide.
An NBC News analysis concluded that there are now 1,354 children, on average, admitted to hospitals in the U.S. every day.
And most of them, as in Atlanta, have pre-existing conditions.
According to Dr. Myers, “the most common risk factor from an underlying condition standpoint is obesity. That said, we still see kids who are hospitalized that aren't obese and don't have other underlying health conditions as well."
The CDC on Wednesday authorized Pfizer booster shots for children ages 12 to 15, to be taken five months after their initial shots. Five million children in the U.S. are in that age group.
The numbers of children hospitalized with COVID are still small compared with older age groups, but the rapid increases, doctors say, show that COVID in children is definitely not always harmless.