Covid hospitalizations high among young children in Allegheny County

Last month, covid-19 hospitalizations among young children jumped to the highest level since the start of the pandemic, increasing more than 14-fold from mid-December to the end of the month, according to data collected by the Allegheny County Health Department.

The numbers look at hospital admissions by week.

The week of Nov. 28, children under 5 were hospitalized at a rate of 7.8 per 100,000. It fell to 1.6 per 100,000 the week of Dec. 12 and then jumped to 23.5 per 100,000 the week of Dec. 26.

Admissions decreased slightly the week of Jan. 2, the most recent week for which data is available, to 20.4 per 100,000.

Children under 5 make up the only age group not yet eligible to be vaccinated. Allegheny County Health Director Dr. Debra Bogen, a pediatrician, said it is the collective responsibility of the community to reduce the spread of infection for the sake of the young children.

That means wearing masks in public and getting vaccinated, she said.

“In order to protect this vulnerable group, we should all be doing that until they themselves can be vaccinated,” she said.

The positivity rate in Allegheny County hit 35% over the past week, with more than 22,300 new infections reported from Jan. 9 to 15. About 48% of those infections were among the unvaccinated.

The fact that more infections were tallied among those who are vaccinated should not be misread, Bogen said.

“We have 70% of people fully vaccinated here, so the unvaccinated represent a disproportionately high part of the cases given that they represent a smaller part of the population,” she said. “More importantly, the (unvaccinated population) is way overrepresented in the serious outcome category — that is, hospitalizations, ventilator use in hospitals and death.”

Post-vaccination data released Tuesday by the state Department of Health show just that.

Seventy-eight percent of all covid-19 cases reported in Pennsylvania from Jan. 1, 2021, to Jan. 4, 2022, were among people who were unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated.

Fully vaccinated means that someone is either two weeks out from the second dose in a two-shot series or two weeks out from the single dose in a one-shot series.

People who were unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated made up 85% of hospitalizations for which covid was the primary reason for admission. Of the deaths reported during that time, 84% of people were unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated.