Over 12.8 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic, according to the report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children’s Hospital Association.

More than 130,000 of these cases were added in the past four weeks.
Since the first week of September in 2021, there had been nearly 7.8 million additional child COVID-19 cases, according to the report.

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The report said children represented 19 percent of all COVID-19 cases in the United States.

In the last week of March, children accounted for 16.6 percent of reported weekly COVID-19 cases.

There is an urgent need to collect more age-specific data to assess the severity of illness related to new variants as well as potential longer-term effects, the report stated.

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“It is important to recognize there are immediate effects of the pandemic on children’s health.

“But most importantly we need to identify and address the long-lasting impacts on the physical, mental, and social well-being of this generation of children and youth,” it added.