Child COVID hospitalizations are rising. What you need to know and how much you should worry. – NJ.com

COVID-19 cases among children are spiking in New Jersey and across the country. But while the growing number of kids hospitalized with the coronavirus is raising concern, it’s a relative one, some experts say.

“We are definitely seeing more children in the hospital,” said Dr. Margaret Fisher, a pediatric infectious disease expert and special advisor to New Jersey Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli.

As of Friday morning, 95 children across the state were hospitalized with COVID-19, down from 119 on Thursday but almost double the number from late December, according to the Department of Health. Another eight kids were under investigation for the coronavirus.

But only 24 of the 95 confirmed cases had a principal diagnosis of COVID-19, the state health department said, meaning the other kids went to the hospital for reasons unrelated to the virus and tested positive once there.

Fisher said the rise in pediatric hospitalizations is a concern. While the omicron variant — which is driving the current surge — causes less severe illness on average in adults and children, it is highly contagious and has the potential to overwhelm the state health care system.

“The concern is that we may run out of beds, and we may run out of people who are trained in pediatric care,” Fisher said.

She noted that there are fewer pediatric beds than adult beds in New Jersey and typically fewer medical workers on staff.

RWJBarnabas Health, which operates a dozen acute-care hospitals in the state, has seen an increase in pediatric cases. But children accounted for only 2% of all COVID-19 inpatients — and the majority of them were unvaccinated — according to a health system spokeswoman.

On the other hand, Inspira Health, which runs three hospitals in South Jersey, said it had “not seen a significant increase in hospitalized children due to COVID specifically.”

“Most of our increases has been among adults (all ages) but not so much in our pediatric population thankfully,” said a spokeswoman for Cooper University Hospital in Camden in an email.

Therefore, while pandemic angst has returned with omicron, concerns among some experts are tempered as they put the pediatric numbers and severity of illness into perspective.

Dr. Daniel Varga, chief physician executive at Hackensack Meridian Health, was not overly alarmed. Despite the rise in pediatric hospitalizations, he said the numbers remain low. He added that illnesses have been milder, and there have been fewer cases of the rare, coronavirus-linked multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) than seen earlier in the crisis.

“It’s following the same general story that we’ve seen all through the pandemic,” Varga said. “That children are being infected a lot less than adults seem to be. When they get sick, they tend to be less sick than adults. The severe illness we see in children is a lot less than the severe illness we saw in adults, although the severe illness in adults is declining from the first surge, the second surge and now this omicron spike.”

Still, omicron continues to spread widely, causing infections and hospitalizations to rise among all ages.

Children are not immune from developing severe illness from COVID-19 — especially those with underlying health risks. So vaccination remains recommended for all eligible ages, experts say.

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Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com.