Keiser said Kali’s death was “really shocking,” but it should not have been, given that 40 percent of the county’s cases are people under 20 and the single largest demographic is children under 10. .

9, nearly 5.3 million children had been diagnosed with Covid-19, representing 15.5 percent of all cases, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

2 to Sept 9., the second-highest number of child cases in a week since the beginning of the pandemic, representing nearly 29 percent of the weekly reported cases, according to AAP.

Despite the explosion in cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the pediatric specialists and clinical investigators studying the disease still do not have evidence that delta causes more severe infections in children and adolescents.

“So, it can be difficult to understand whether we have more severe disease due to delta or co-infections,” he said.

“We can confidently state that the biggest impact of delta on children is simply greater case numbers or the much larger number of children with Covid.” .

Sean O’Leary, vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious diseases, said while the question of whether the virus is more severe for children is important, it is “not as important as how many children, frankly, right now are getting infected and getting hospitalized.”

The studies did not find evidence that the delta variant appeared to cause more severe illness in kids, but the sheer number of children exposed to it was driving an increase in kids hospitalized with Covid

Whether or not delta itself is more severe, doctors say they are noting more instances of children falling severely ill as the pandemic has progressed and the delta variant has become predominant

Yildirim said Covid is a milder disease in children than in adults, “but it is not a mild disease in childhood at all, when you have hundreds of children dying.”

Claudette Poole, a pediatric infectious disease doctor with Children’s of Alabama hospital, said the hospital has been testing all children admitted since spring of last year for Covid. 

Poole said this appeared to show delta could be more likely to cause actual symptoms in children than prior variants

Poole said it was important for people to know Covid can cause severe disease in children, even if it is more rare than in adults.