Press reports of the Delta virus’ impact on children across the country have been alarming since July, when cases and hospital admissions jumped significantly after a bottoming out in June. Most of the attention has fallen on Florida and other southern states, but there have been concerning stories in Illinois, too.
With limited consumable COVID data in Illinois, it’s hard for parents to know what’s really going on here. Are Illinois children being more severely impacted than before? To help out, Wirepoints has analyzed the latest available data from the CDC and IDPH.
For sure the Delta variant has been more contagious – cases among Illinois children hit their 2nd-highest peak in early September. But the good news is that serious illness or death hasn’t increased for Illinois kids under the age of 20. Hospitalizations and deaths have remained within the same range they’ve been in since before Delta. And case-survival rates have also remained unchanged.
The Illinois data confirms what Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases, recently said in TIME about the impact of the variant nationwide: “There is no evidence that the Delta variant is causing more severe disease than previous strains.”
The most recent CDC study on youth hospitalizations nationwide also says the same thing: “Among all hospitalized children and adolescents with COVID-19, the proportions with indicators of severe disease…after the Delta variant became predominant (June 20–July 31, 2021) were similar to those earlier in the pandemic (March 1, 2020–June 19, 2021).”
For more than three months the concern was that Illinois’ youth hospitalization and death numbers would rise above their previous pandemic highs – like what occured in Florida. But Illinois never experienced a Florida-like spike, and now cases and hospitalizations are declining, just as they are in most of the nation.
Wirepoints looked at the data involving Illinois children and COVID and found the following:
1. The number of Illinois youth hospitalized due to COVID has remained within a tight range throughout the entire pandemic, even during the rise of Delta.
In this section, Wirepoints covers two separate pieces of hospitalization data: admissions and hospitalizations. Admissions capture the number of children admitted to hospitals on a given day. Hospitalizations, meanwhile, measure the total number of children staying in hospitals on a given day.
The number of daily child admissions in Illinois is still stuck within the same range that’s existed throughout the pandemic. At most, the Delta variant has pushed admissions to the upper part of the state’s range. Recent admissions with confirmed and suspected COVID topped out at 49 children per day (7-day average), about the same as previous admission peaks in October and November 2020.
Even with the higher rate of admissions, the actual number of kids staying in hospitals with either confirmed or suspected COVID topped out at 70 in September, far below the pandemic peak of 113 kids last year in October.
2. Illinois’ Delta wave has not resulted in a higher rate of child fatalities.
Youth COVID deaths are still in the same pattern they’ve been in throughout the pandemic, remaining consistently in the 0 to 3 range per month.
Surprisingly, the data shows it’s still Illinoisans over 60 that continue to be the most at risk from the virus. The elderly have made up 75 percent of all COVID deaths since July 1.
3. Known-case survival rates for youth have remained flat since July 1, 2021.
Before the Delta variant appeared, Illinois had lost 20 kids under the age of 20 to COVID, according to IDPH data. The survival rate for that age group, based on the 227,391 known-cases in Illinois, was 99.991 percent through July 2021.
Even after the variant appeared and cases climbed, the survivability rate for youth under 20 has remained the same, at 99.990%.*
Other fatalities kill far more children than COVID
It’s important to put Illinois’ COVID numbers in perspective. A total of 18 Illinois children aged 17 and under have died of the virus over the last 18 months, according to the CDC.
While the death of every child is tragic, compare the 18 deaths to those from simple accidents in Illinois. Parents let their kids ride bikes, go to the lake or drive cars, not realizing that those activities can result in far more deaths than COVID has. In 2017, the latest full year of IDPH data for comparison, 143 Illinois kids died from accidents alone.
Suicide, too, took more lives than COVID. In 2017, certainly a less stressful period than 2020-2021, 73 kids died from suicide.
In all, 606 Illinois youth aged 1 to 17 died in 2017. The 18 COVID deaths – over a year and a half – equal just 3 percent of that total.
Fortunately, COVID continues to largely spare the lives of Illinois children. And the good news is, all the recent Delta numbers are trending downward. Let’s hope it continues.
*If we were to include the asymptomatic cases that were never captured by doctors, the survival rate would approach 99.997%, according to estimates by the CDC.