UK COVID variant now spreading readily among US children

Children now playing 'huge role' in spread of COVID-19 variant, expert says

"Please understand, this B.1.1.7 variant is a brand new ball game," Osterholm said on NBC's Meet the Press. "It infects kids very readily. Unlike previous strains of the virus, we didn't see children under 8th grade get infected often or they were not frequently very ill, they didn't transmit to the rest of the community."

In Minnesota, Osterholm said more than 740 schools reported cases of the variant. In Michigan more young people are ended up in hospitals fighting more serious symptoms than previously seen in children with COVID-19.

This is similar to what health officials have seen in other countries.

The British Medical Journal wrote two months ago that "emerging evidence from Israel and Italy (shows) more young children are being infected with new variants of COVID-19."

"What we're seeing is pockets of infection around the country, particularly in younger people who haven't been vaccinated, and also in school-aged children," former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

"If you look what's happening in Michigan, in Minnesota, in Massachusetts, for example, you're seeing outbreaks in schools and infections in social cohorts that haven't been exposed to the virus before."

"The infection is changing its contours in terms of who's being stricken by it right now," he added.

In Florida's Orange County, officials reported late last month a rise in Covid-19 cases in the 18-25 age group.

Between the first and last weeks of March [in New Jersey], there was a 31% and 48% increase in the number of hospitalizations among the 20-29 and 40-49 age groups, respectively, state health commissioner Judy Persichilli said Wednesday.

LINK

Even as coronavirus cases in the United States remain far off their peaks as vaccinations accelerate, 63,862 new covid-19 cases among children, representing 18 percent of the total, were reported for the week ending April 1, according to data collected by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. A growing number of them are caused by virus variants, which represent a big unknown in what is otherwise a time of national optimism. The question is whether these emerging B.1.1.7 clusters foreshadow the surges seen in parts of Europe, where they upended school openings and a return to normalcy, or are just a blip on the way to the end of the pandemic in the United States, given the pace of vaccinations here.

In Nevada, the B.1.1.7 variant — which has been confirmed in several studies to be more infectious — has been linked to an outbreak at a recent youth volleyball tournament. In Michigan, cases among those ages 10 to 19 have jumped 133 percent during the past month, faster than any other age group, and the state’s leading epidemiologist said the infections seem to have been spread through activities “including sports, but not limited to sports,” rather than in the classroom.

Many of these outbreaks involving young people “are related to youth sports and extracurricular activities,” said Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a briefing Monday. She noted that CDC guidance calls for limiting those activities and urged Americans to “please continue to hang in there and continue to do the things that we know prevent the spread.”

Strathos said:

Do the vaccines provide protection against this variant?

Click to expand...

I think so broadly speaking, but it may depend on which vaccine and which variant. This is a story referring to the Pfizer vaccine "Overall, their results suggest that a previous infection or vaccination provides good protection against B.1.1.7 [UK] but much less effective protection against B.1.351 [South African]."