Americans are facing a daunting surge in COVID-19 cases, with rates of infection for children and adults under 50 at their highest levels yet. However, with the school year starting across the country, parents have another worry – kids are transmitting the coronavirus to family members – vaccinated or not.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday granted full approval to the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for people age 16 and older. This news should allay the concerns of those who are vaccine-hesitant, as all three vaccines available in the US have so far been distributed under emergency use authorization.
CTV News Canada points out that some experts are saying the news could also help businesses, schools, and states enforce vaccine mandates, hopefully putting a stop to the ever-growing number of cases, especially in states where vaccination rates have been low.
Particularly concerning is the daily average of newly reported cases. It is around 147,000, and experts have warned it could surpass 200,000 on the current trajectory. More than half of the total U.S. population, 51.5% or about 170 million people, were fully vaccinated as of Sunday, according to CDC data.
The return to in-person learning and exposing the entire family
Nationwide between Aug. 5 and Aug 12, about 121,000 children tested positive for the virus, reports the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. That’s a 23 percent increase over the prior week.
Of that number – leading up to the start of classes, 3,255 students tested positive for the coronavirus in the Los Angeles, California Unified School District, reports NPR.org.
And last week over 3,000 students and staff in Florida’s Brevard Public Schools had to go into quarantine, while in Hawaii, some schools are pulling the plug on in-class learning entirely, returning to remote learning.
“Time and time again we’re seeing kids return to school and then come home — either after an exposure or sick themselves,” says Dr. Nicole Braxley, an emergency medicine physician at Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Sacramento. “The virus sheds for a couple of days before the patient has symptoms. Entire families are suddenly exposed.”
The increase in cases among school-age children is also having an impact on families. And it appears to make little difference in the parent’s vaccine status, although, for those moms and dads who do pick up the virus from their children, the breakthrough infection may not be quite as bad – compared to not being vaccinated.
But a child coming home from school sick with COVID-19 does require that the family take certain precautions, like calling neighbors, family members, and others who have recently interacted with the family.
Stephanie Chenard’s 8-year-old son Desmond started third grade in the Bay Area last week. On the evening of the first day of class, she received an email from the school district saying four students had tested positive for the virus in four different schools.
In just a few days, Desmond started to lose his appetite and developed a fever. Chenard grimaces, remembering the moment the family learned Desmond had tested positive for COVID-19. The news shattered the 8-year-old. Fortunately, her son’s case was mild. His fever broke the same day it started.
“Desmond was only sick for eight hours, but I spent 45 hours on notifications alone,” Chenard says. The child’s quarantine — and subsequent isolation for the rest of the family — also required both parents to juggle work and child care. Neither parent, who were vaccinated, caught the virus.
Breakthrough cases are on the rise nationally
As of August 16, 2021, more than 168 million people in the United States had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. During the same time period, CDC received reports from 49 U.S. states and territories of 9,716 patients with COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infection who were hospitalized or died.
“Symptoms can be absent or so mild in the vaccinated, many dismiss this as a cold or seasonal allergies,” Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a University of California, San Francisco professor and infectious disease specialist notes in an email. “In other words, you don’t know what you don’t know.”
In the week leading up to July 24, about 384,000 people across the country tested positive for the coronavirus, which indicates about 9 percent of new cases were likely breakthrough infections. Chin-Hong says this is probably an underestimate of the true total, but shouldn’t undermine the value of vaccines in peoples’ minds.
