Dr. Osterholm provides insight on the state of the pandemic

San Francisco CA

Description

it is a delta delta delta world and we just have to understand that that's what we're living with and until i see something that would suggest to the contrary i think delta is going to be around for quite some time so now on to schools we've been discussing your concerns about schools in recent weeks and at this point most k-12 and college students across the country are fully back in school are we getting any indications yet of what we might see in the coming weeks we are getting an indication and it is not pretty not at all according to the latest report from the academy of pediatrics and the children's hospital association there were nearly 252 000 cases in children age 0-17 during the week of august 27 to september 2nd that's by far the highest number of weekly cases and kids we've reported to date shattering the previous record set in mid-january by more than 40 000 cases it also means that more than one in four us cases that week was detected in kids this is the challenge that i worry that far too many people in our educational system and parents do not understand let me just provide an update on the current number of deaths reported in the united states according to the maricato pediatrics his week there have been 444 total cova deaths in children since the start of the pandemic if we look at that number for the last year in particular from september 3rd 2020 to september 2nd 2021 in that one year span there were 341 deaths a total of 66 of those annual deaths almost 20 percent occurred in just the past three weeks think of that 20 percent of the deaths in the last year have occurred just in the last three weeks this is indicative of what delta is doing this is why it is so urgent for us to address transmission in kids in schools and to understand that this is a different virus with regard to what happens to kids and we can't rely on those old data last year's data looks very much like potentially a bad flu year i can fully support we should be doing for schools and children with that kind of a picture as we do each year with flu we're in a different setting