- There are less than 250 children who have died from the coronavirus.
- More than three-quarters of the deaths were in children of color.
- In general, children make up about 13% of coronavirus cases in the US.
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Children make up a small percentage of the total COVID-19 mortality rate in the U.S., but the majority of adolescents who have died from the virus so far have been colored.
On February 11, 241 children died from COVID-19, according to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 75% of COVID-19 deaths among children were children of color.
The CDC study looked at 121 deaths among children between February and July 2020 and found that 45% were Hispanic, 29% black and 4% non-Hispanic American or Alaska.
The mortality rate among children of color is higher than the mortality rate of adults of color compared to their white counterparts. Adults of color die more than twice as much from the coronavirus.
NPR reports that underlying conditions such as asthma, obesity and heart issues are a risk factor for children to develop serious illnesses, similar to adults.
In total, there were more than 3 million cases of coronavirus among children, about 13% of the total number of cases in the US.
Although many children who died of coronavirus complications ended up in the hospital, many people died at home or in the emergency, reports NPR.
Tagan, 5, fell ill in October and her mother, Lastassija White, took her to the hospital after she woke up in the middle of the night, The Washington Post reported. Doctors at Northwest Texas Healthcare System Hospital sent her home and told her to isolate her after she tested positive for coronavirus. That night, White found that she was not responding.
Kimora “Kimmie” Lynum was 9 when she died of COVID-19 and no one knew she had the virus just after she died, reports the Post.
Lynum told her mother that one day in July she had a stomach ache and after her temperature shot up to 103, she was rushed to hospital where doctors did not test her for the coronavirus and sent her home. She seems to be doing better and playing better, but six days later she took an afternoon nap and later stopped responding.
Several factors, including underlying conditions and multisystem inflammatory syndrome – a very rare post-inflammatory condition that affects children weeks after a coronavirus infection – can lead to death, the Post reports.
Another factor was simply a lack of awareness at the beginning of the pandemic that children could be severely affected by the virus. Dr Preeti Malani, a specialist in infectious diseases at the University of Michigan, told NPR: “It has long been believed that children do not die from this.”