WBEN: Kids and COVID: Doctors relay what to know in WNY

Released: 8/12/2020 4:22:48 PM

A New Morning with Susan Rose and Brian Mazurowski
August 12, 2020 - 8:36 am

(WBEN) - A report this week from the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association says that nearly 100,000 children tested positive for COVID-19 in the last two weeks of July.

According to the report, 97,078 kids tested positive for coronavirus between July 16 and July 30, meaning the number of positive tests in children increased 40% at a time when many are weighing the return to in-person schools.

But do the numbers represent a spike, or something that has just flown under the radar? 

"Certain individuals have had this wishful thinking that children were immune... we've known for a long time that children can get infected," said Dr. Tom Russo, Chief of Infectious Disease at the Jacobs School of medicine. "They just started looking. The reason this wishful thinking developed was because children for the most part are asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic, so they weren't being tested and were flying under the radar."

Russo said the "spike" is likely a testing abnormality, but tells us much of the same information we have known all along. Children can be infected and spread Coronavirus, but rarely show major signs of symptoms. 

In Buffalo, just four pediatric COVID cases were admitted to Oishei Children's Hospital in the month of July, with very few symptoms being shown among them according to Medical Director Dr. Stephen Turkovich. Turkovich told WBEN earlier this month that parents in Western New York should be encouraged by the lack of issues at daycares that have been open for children over the past five months, and that the local picture is very different from what is happening nationally.

https://wben.radio.com/articles/kids-and-covid-doctors-relay-what-to-know-in-wny