Article on delta specifically in children

[Anonymous]

I don't see a thread specifically about concerns about delta in children -- I see comments scattered throughout other threads, but thought it would be useful to put together the things I've seen and read about children (specifically those too young to be vaccinated) and delta. I'm a parent of a child that is too young to be vaccinated yet, so I have been alternatively alarmed about delta reports and the possibility of school closures.

At any rate, the messages that I see as constant are:
1. delta is more transmissible. But it still seems unclear if delta in kids is as transmissible as delta in adults.
2. there's no evidence yet that delta is more virulent in children. It seems like some of the reports about delta being more virulent in adults are also conflicting. Prior strains of covid have not been very virulent at all in kids.
3. vaccines offer very good protection against delta, but the <12 are not vaccinated, so they make up a larger share of cases.
4. more transmissible means more kids will get it, but so far don't seem to be more likely to get hospitalized once they get it. Overall numbers of child hospitalization may increase.
5. all public health experts agree that the risks from covid are very small related to the risks of school closures
6. kids should wear masks in school to lower transmission
7. the best protection against delta for unvaxxed kids is for the people around them who can be vaccinated, to be vaccinated

I'm also dividing the articles I've read into individual comments in order to help with potential responses to them and to decrease the length of individual comments.

[Anonymous]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/29/well/family/back-to-school-covid.html

Overall the news is reassuring when it comes to children and the risks of serious complications from Covid-19. New research suggests the Delta variant may cause more serious illness in adults, but it’s not known if the variant puts children at greater risk of more serious illness. Compared to adults, children diagnosed with Covid-19 are more likely to have mild symptoms or none at all. Children are also far less likely to develop severe illness, be hospitalized or die from the disease. Out of about 3.5 million cases of Covid-19 in children in the United States, the National Center for Health Statistics has reported, as of July 28, that 519 children have died from Covid-19 (fewer than 0.015 percent), including 346 children 5 to 17 years of age, and 173 children 4 or younger.

[Anonymous]

https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/delta-variant-kids-parents-emily-oster.html

The delta variant is more contagious; exactly how much is unclear, but it seems in the range of 60 percent to 100 percent more (100 percent more contagious = twice as contagious). This means that if an interaction with an infected person had a 10 percent chance of leading to infection with the original COVID-19, that same interaction has a 16 percent to 20 percent chance now.
This means that everyone—kids and adults—is more likely to be infected from a given interaction with an infected person. However, the data does not suggest a relatively greater degree of infectiousness for kids. That is, it doesn’t look like children’s increase in susceptibility with this variant is more than adults’. And remember, kids were not very susceptible to past variants of the coronavirus—which means even a doubly infectious virus does not leave them terribly vulnerable.
The best data we have on this is from the U.K., where frequent sequencing and the dominance of the delta variant for the past several months make it possible to look at the age patterns of infection. Just as in earlier phases of the pandemic, rates in younger children remain extremely low. (The most dramatic rise in infection rates over the past month is in people 16 to 24, a group that in the U.S. has been eligible for vaccination for several months, though even they are also still seeing a low percentage of positive tests, still under 1 percent.)
The group aged 2 to 11 is perhaps the most relevant here, in terms of parenting decisions, and the rates are low and flat even though there has been unmasked in-person school during this period. This should be reassuring.

...

Is infection more serious?

Serious infection or death from COVID-19 in kids is extremely rare. We know this, and it continues to be reinforced with data. Just this week, several studies out of the U.K. showed extremely low child death rates. Of almost half a million infections, there were 25 deaths, 15 of which were in children with serious underlying conditions. Any death is tragic, and death is not the only thing we are worried about, but this reinforces the conclusion that children are extremely low risk.

Turning to delta: There is disagreement about whether the delta variant leads to more severe disease in general. Some people have suggested it does, based on one study out of Scotland. Others have noted that there’s just not much data elsewhere backing up the idea that it leads to serious disease. However, this is generally a challenging question.

When it comes to kids, though, the data doesn’t point to anything that would look like alarming increases in hospitalization rates in recent weeks. Broadly, both cases and hospitalization rates have been declining in children in the U.S. over 2021. Delta has not been dominant here in this period, but the U.K. data also does not show significant hospitalization spikes over the past few weeks, either.

[Anonymous]

https://theweek.com/delta-variant/1003220/what-parents-with-young-children-should-know-about-the-delta-variant

Notably, this article is mostly a reaction to the recent updated CDC statements specifically about delta:

"Thankfully, for children, the risk of severe COVID remains still very small," agreed Dr. Marcella Nuñez-Smith of the White House COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force. Of course, Americans should try to prevent any and all infections, she added, but parents should be assured that nothing has changed "so drastically" in terms of a child's COVID-19 risk. Until kids can be vaccinated, the updated, Delta-driven mask guidelines can be used to inform parents' risk evaluation when indoors with individuals whose vaccination status is unknown.

[Anonymous]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/what-top-pediatricians-want-you-know-about-delta-variant-children-n1274536

Dr. Jennifer Lighter, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at NYU Langone Health, said the delta variant, while it is "certainly more contagious," doesn't appear to be more dangerous to children than other variants. As of Thursday, more than 4 million children had been diagnosed with Covid-19, about 14.2 percent of all cases, according to the AAP. Versalovic also said, "We have no firm evidence that the disease severity in children and adolescents is any different with the delta variant."

[Anonymous]

regarding Germany and tangentially UK:

https://www.dw.com/en/delta-variant-will-returning-to-school-put-kids-at-risk/a-58579300

“Currently we actually don't have any data that the delta variant is more dangerous for the individual child than the alpha variant that was prominent before or the wild type for that matter. At this point, if you look at hospitalization rates, if you look at kids admitted to the ICU, nothing changed with the emergence of the delta variant. The delta variant is more transmissible, so you will have more people overall and for that matter more children who do get infected. But the individual risk did not change with the emergence of the delta variant.”

Does this mean that the number of kids that you're looking after there hasn't changed or are there more kids at your hospital right not because of the delta variant?

Currently we do not have a single kid with COVID-19 in the hospital. Obviously numbers are still quite low in Germany, but there are kids infected with the delta variant in Dresden and in the surrounding areas. But none of them has been sick enough to get to the hospital. If you look at data from the UK, where the delta variant emerged earlier than in Germany, you don't see more kids being admitted to the hospital due to COVID-19 with delta being more prevalent.

We heard that the symptoms of adults getting COVID-19 through the delta variant varied compared with the original strain. Now you're saying, just to clarify, that there is no difference whatsoever with children?

No difference that we could determine at this point. We do have a national registry where all hospitalized children with COVID-19 are reported, and we don't have any difference in the last month compared to the months before. And the same is true if you talk to pediatricians in the UK for example: They don't see a difference either. Children do have mild symptoms usually, but they don't get very sick with the delta variant.

[Anonymous]

One thing to pay attention to is the differing definitions of child.

The data on under 10's in particular is very different because of something to do with the development of the nose. Also under 16 versus under 18 presents confusion as does babies. If an article doesnt define the age range then one has to assume that they are lumping 0-18 together, which isnt altogether useful from an analytical standpoint.

[Anonymous]

One of my take-aways is that the cases examined are so rare (even with delta) as to prevent statistically meaningful results. It seems like the same thing with the vaccines -- there are so few kids that get covid that it becomes difficult to statistically compare the treatment and control groups.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of my take-aways is that the cases examined are so rare (even with delta) as to prevent statistically meaningful results. It seems like the same thing with the vaccines -- there are so few kids that get covid that it becomes difficult to statistically compare the treatment and control groups.

Yes, I will believe delta is as bad as the headlines are screaming if they get enough pediatric cases in the control group to move kid vaccine approvals back to fall.

Otherwise it can’t be that bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of my take-aways is that the cases examined are so rare (even with delta) as to prevent statistically meaningful results. It seems like the same thing with the vaccines -- there are so few kids that get covid that it becomes difficult to statistically compare the treatment and control groups.

Yes, I will believe delta is as bad as the headlines are screaming if they get enough pediatric cases in the control group to move kid vaccine approvals back to fall.

Otherwise it can’t be that bad.

hopefully they are trialing it in the south …

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of my take-aways is that the cases examined are so rare (even with delta) as to prevent statistically meaningful results. It seems like the same thing with the vaccines -- there are so few kids that get covid that it becomes difficult to statistically compare the treatment and control groups.

Yes, I will believe delta is as bad as the headlines are screaming if they get enough pediatric cases in the control group to move kid vaccine approvals back to fall.

Otherwise it can’t be that bad.

hopefully they are trialing it in the south …

That's an interesting point. I wonder if they are.

[Anonymous]

Also I it what you said to mean the "global South", not the U.S. south.

[Anonymous]

I mean you have people posting that the breakthrough infections are 70%. That is simply not true and we have no evidence for it.
We also have cases falling rapidly in the U.K. We have nothing in thousands of deaths even in states that are unvaccinated and having major outbreaks right now.
I can't see the future to know what will happen.
I do know that there is cognitive dissonance on dcum among some pps who are claiming that the lockdowns, infection rates, and schools must be closed right away to protect our kids and ourselves.
They are simply the new Qanon, as dumb as those believing that covid is a hoax.

[Anonymous]

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/04/delta-variant-what-do-we-know-about-the-coronavirus-strain-in-australian-children

Regarding Australia and delta:

“In the UK, they are seeing a large number of younger individuals being infected with the Delta variant,” she says. “You’re then faced with the question: is it something fundamentally different about this variant, or is it simply that the unvaccinated members of the population are getting infected, which would not be surprising.

“When the Alpha variant first emerged, there were [initially] also these suggestions that it was more transmissible in children,” Short says. “That doesn’t seem to be the case.”

Prof Catherine Bennett, the inaugural chair in epidemiology at Deakin University, says across all age groups, the Delta variant is more effective at causing infection. Delta is at least 50% more infectious than the Alpha variant, previously the dominant strain in the UK.

“[Children] may not be as infectious as adults still, but they are now an important part of the spread of the virus in the community,” Bennett says.

Does the Delta variant make kids sicker?
In the UK, there has been an increase in hospital admissions in young people with Delta, says Prof Fiona Russell, the director of child and adolescent health at the University of Melbourne. That rise may be partially attributable to how transmissible Delta is, rather than an increase in virulence.

Early UK figures have shown the risk of hospital admission is 2.61 times higher with the Delta variant compared with the Alpha variant first detected in Kent.

“We [still] don’t have good solid data that the Delta variant is more virulent,” Short says.

[Anonymous]

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/07/17/1017075240/delta-variant-is-spreading-fast-and-new-cases-are-rising-is-time-to-mask-up-agai

It's possible that children who get infected with the delta variant might have more symptoms than they would if they were infected with an earlier version of the virus. With a more transmissible variant, "when someone gets sick, they tend to have more virus, and they tend to have more symptoms," Chu explains.

That being said, Chu says, typically "children are not that symptomatic from COVID." Her best guess? She thinks delta "probably will not lead to significant numbers of children getting hospitalized."