Hundreds of children being admitted to Arizona hospitals for COVID-19
PHOENIX – “Parents, please make good choices to keep your children and the community safe” are the words spoken by a Banner Health spokeswoman as she says hundreds of children with COVID-19 in Arizona are being admitted to hospitals every month.
On a Twitter topic Sunday, January 17, Becky Armendariz, public health specialist at Banner Health, said that hundreds of children with COVID-19 are being hospitalized each month and the numbers are growing compared to December and January cases.
She did not give details about the severity of childhood illnesses, but asked parents to make responsible decisions regarding their children’s health.
Armendariz said he wrote the tweet while looking out the window and watching a youth soccer tournament with “Children and masked referees. Parents with masks under their chin, talking / cheering close to others”.
She shared Jama Network data showing how pediatric numbers related to COVID-19 are trending in Arizona. Jama Network noted trends in children being diagnosed with COVID-19 in 22 states, including Arizona.
“At the beginning of the study, the average cumulative hospitalization rate per 100,000 children was 2.0, increasing to 17.2 at the end of the study,” says the study.
At the end of the study, Arizona was classified as one of the two critical points for children who contract COVID-19. “Hawaii and New Hampshire had the lowest rates, 4.3 and 3.4 per 100,000, respectively, and South Dakota and Arizona had the highest rates, 33.7 and 32.8 per 100,000.”
The study looked at numbers between the dates of May 15, 2020 and November 15, 2020.
Newborn baby in Arizona gets serious case of COVID-19
Maria Espinoza says her newborn baby was hospitalized for several days after a diagnosis of COVID-19, and doctors say that, unfortunately, more serious cases in children are becoming more and more common.
“My heart broke. I cried every day,” said Espinoza, while his 27-day-old baby had a high fever, moaning at night and refusing to sleep.
“I took him to two different hospitals. The first told me he was just constipated. They said, ‘don’t worry, take him home’.”
His symptoms continued to get worse. In the middle of the night, Espinoza rushed him to the children’s hospital.
“Maternal intuition, I thought, ‘no, there is something really wrong with my baby,'” she said. There was definitely something wrong. He had COVID-19.
The family doctor, Dr. Andrew Carroll, says the growing number of children with COVID is “quite significant”, adding, “I know from reports by my fellow pediatricians that they are starting to see their hospitals becoming full of children with COVID. “
He believes that one of the reasons for the dramatic increase in children’s hospitalizations is due to the fact that more and more schools are returning to face-to-face learning and continuing with sports.
One of the other reasons, he says, is that new variants of the virus in the UK and Africa are spreading more rapidly among children.
“When you have something that is just so contagious it goes up about 50%, those people who thought they couldn’t get sick, these people are getting sick now,” he explained.
As for Espinoza, she says she knows exactly how her newborn was exposed to COVID-19. On Christmas Day, a relative who passed by tested the virus without telling anyone. They later found that the test was positive.
Now, she is issuing a word of warning to others, especially her parents, to take this virus seriously.
“If you think you can have COVID, stay home, put yourself in quarantine. Because my son could have died just for that person who showed up,” she said.
Espinoza says he also received COVID-19 from that relative, as well as his other two children. She says that one of them had symptoms, the other did not.
Doctors say the virus affects each child differently.
Read more about the study on here.
Read more about Arizona’s response to the pandemic on here.
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