1 Children and teens are far more likely to die from gunfire than COVID-19, 2 yet our leaders continue to allow gun violence to go uncurbed and gun laws to go unchanged.Īfter years of congressional inaction, a growing number of children are paying with their lives. Gun violence was the leading cause of death for all children and teens ages 1-19 in 2018, surpassing motor vehicle accidents for the first time in history. ![]() Working together, communities can significantly limit the extent of infection and severe disease.Even before COVID-19, another epidemic was killing our children at higher rates: gun violence. Fortunately, we now have an array of effective tools to minimize risk, from building ventilation to air purifiers to safe vaccines. However, because deaths among children and young people in the US are rare, the mortality burden of COVID-19 is best understood in the context of all other causes of death in this age-group.Īccording to the researchers, these results suggest that, with variants of COVID-19 continuing to circulate, public health measures such as vaccinations, staying at home when sick, and ventilation still have an important role to play in limiting transmission of the virus and mitigating severe disease in children and young people.Īssociate Professor Seth Flaxman (Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford), lead author of the study, said: ‘These results demonstrate that while it's rare for kids and teens to die in the US, COVID-19 is now the leading underlying cause of death from infectious disease for this age group. For instance, between 1 August 2021 and 31 July 2022, the COVID-19 death rate among all ages in the US was 109 per 100,000. Therefore, it is likely that these results understate the true burden of COVID-19 related deaths in this age-group.Ĭompared with other age-groups, the overall risk of death from COVID-19 was substantially lower in children and young people. Many of the 82 million American children and young people were infected during the big Delta and Omicron waves, and as a result more than 1,300 children and young people have died from COVID-19 during the pandemic, most in the last two years.Īssociate Professor Seth Flaxman, Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford.Īlthough COVID-19 amplifies the impacts of other diseases (such as pneumonia and influenza), this study focuses on deaths that were directly caused by COVID-19, rather than those where COVID-19 was a contributing cause. The month with the highest number of COVID-19 related deaths in 0 - 19 year-olds was January 2022 at 160.Nevertheless, in the pre-Delta period of the pandemic, COVID-19 still ranked as the ninth leading cause of death overall. Overall, deaths in children and young people were higher during the Delta and Omicron waves compared to previous waves (pre-July 2021), likely reflecting the higher numbers infected during these periods.COVID-19 death rates were highest in infants aged less than one year (4.3 per 100,000), second highest in those aged 15–19 years (1.8 per 100,000), and lowest in children aged 5 –9 years (0.4 per 100,000). Like many diseases, COVID-19 death rates followed a U-shaped pattern across this age-range.The leading cause of death (perinatal conditions) had an overall death rate of 12.7 per 100,000 COVID-19 ranked ahead of influenza and pneumonia, which together had a death rate of 0.6 per 100,000. COVID-19 was the underlying cause for 2% of deaths in children and young people (800 out of 43,000), with an overall death rate of 1.0 per 100,000 of the population aged 0–19.By age group, COVID-19 ranked seventh (infants), seventh (1–4 year olds), sixth (5–9 year olds), sixth (10–14 year olds), and fifth (15–19 year olds). ![]()
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