COVID-19 Weekly Watch KIDS edition

August 24, 2020

With schools reopening this month and next, student and teacher health and safety is at the center of public debate. While most data shows that COVID-19 in children manifests in mild or no symptoms, young ones can still be the cause of superspreading events, transmitting the virus en masse to other children and adults. As such, school districts across the country have been working tirelessly to determine how best to educate their students in this time when the threat of the virus has yet to subside. With varying degrees of guidance from state and local officials, the efficacy of these thousands of district re-opening plans will likely be evident from case numbers in the weeks to come. This week, I4DI looks at COVID-19 data as it relates to kids.

Here are a few highlights from this week’s infographic, as of August 16:

- – 443,137 children in the United States, 1 in a group of 175, have tested positive for COVID-19. That is nearly equal to the population of Miami.
- – On average, almost every 5th child who gets tested for COVID-19 is positive.
- – 104 children have died in the United States from COVID-19
- – Over the last 10 days, 63,000 children were newly confirmed positive for COVID-19, a 17% increase in cases.
- – Before this summer, most transmissions to children came through adult household close contacts. As children have been reintroduced to social situations throughout the summer, outbreaks have occurred in superspreading events.
- – 13,000+ public school districts have created (or are still in the process of creating) reopening plans with varying degrees of guidance from their public health officials and school boards. Most states lack systems for tracking of these district plans.