As students in many states return back to physical classrooms for the start of the 2020-2021 school year, it has been reported that pediatric cases of COVID -19 have increased by 21 percent between August 6-20.
Between August 6th-20th, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association reported that there have been 74,160 new cases nationwide of COVID-19 in children, totaling 442,785 new cases since the pandemic began. Although research has shown that “severe illness due to COVID-19 is rare among children,” they are more thank likely to present asymptomatic with the disease and can spread the virus as easily as adults.
“Recently,”officials stated in a CDC report that was released August 14th, that, “evidence suggests that children likely have the same or higher viral loads in their nasopharynx compared with adults and that children can spread the virus effectively in households and camp settings.”
As the virus rises among students many schools have rapidly implemented distancing measures while others have not been as stringent.
In Georgia, where the governor has not required masks in shared spaces, hundreds of students, teachers, and staff members have been exposed to the virus and placed in quarantine, while at least three schools have had to close as a result of the rising positivity numbers.
In Mississippi, CNN reported that hundreds of both students and teachers have tested positive for the virus. Nearly 4,000 students and 600 teachers are in quarantine. The governor of the state said that he was not worried about the rise in cases.
