A recent CNN Health headline reads it’s the same pandemic but different for kids, highlighting recent surge of more contagious Delta variant and more vulnerable unvaccinated younger population.

On the first day of school, Dr. Aaron Milstone, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, who was heading out to his own child’s event, told CNN “A lot of people didn’t send their kids to school last year. This year there’s just a lot more activity and there’s a lot more density of people getting together, and a lot of those people are unvaccinated and are susceptible to a virus that’s spreading quickly through that population”.

Everyone keeps reflecting back on last year and saying: ‘Oh, we got through it with school last year, so we’ll get through it this year’, but this year is drastically different.

Dr. Aaron Milestone, John Hopkins Children’s Center (source: CNN Health)

According to American Academy of Pediatrics, with recent Delta infection surge, cases and hospitalizations among kids are reportedly “increased exponentially” which are at their highest numbers since winter.

Requesting help from The White House, Children’s Hospital Association, CEO Mark Wietecha reportedly wrote that ‘the pandemic and the surge of other respiratory viruses has already brought an “unprecedented strain” to the 220 children’s hospitals’.

• It’s the same pandemic, but now it’s drastically different for kids

According to Xiaoyan Song, director of infection control and epidemiology at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC., the Delta variant is not only selectively infecting children but “It’s very highly contagious” too.

The rise in the numbers in children is attributable to the rise in numbers among the adults.

Dr. Xiaoyan Song (source: CNN Health)

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, ditector of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reportedly told in a recent White House briefing that ‘cases in children and adolescents 17 and younger increased by nearly tenfold from late June to mid-August’ citing a recently published study.

“Although we are seeing more cases in children, and more overall cases, these studies demonstrated that there was not increased disease severity in children. Instead, more children have Covid-19 because there is more disease in the community.”

Dr. Richele Walensky, director of CDC (source: CNN Health)

During the briefing, Dr. Walensky reportedly emphasized that adults need to better by getting vaccinated as the children under the age of 12 cannot get the protection of a vaccine yet.