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Tracking Global COVID-19, Omicron Variant, patients under the age of 5

Double posting this to the original thread as well as this new one.

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'Worrying' number of children and pregnant women in hospital as omicron surges in South Africa

A leading doctor has painted a grim picture from inside an intensive care unit on the outskirts of Johannesburg

snip

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-h...micron-surges/

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Okieman Comment: The Telegraph requires a subscription, which I do not have. But I have posted the title of the article and the link to it due to it mentioning both children and pregnant women. If anyone has a subscription and are willing to post a few paragraphs it would be appreciated.
 
South African Government medical adviser reveals how Omicron is hitting under-5s
Rohan Smith

The South African Government says the Omicron variant of Covid-19 is disproportionately affecting children under five as experts rubbish the notion that the latest strain is “mild”.

snip

World-renowned Harvard-trained epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding responded to the news on social media.

“Mild my ass,” he wrote. “The ‘highly transmissible’ Omicron variant is putting disproportionately large numbers of children under the age of 5 years old in hospitals.

“This hospital surge (in under-5s) is also interesting because the positivity rate of cases is not even the highest for kids age (under-5). Highest positivity is in teens 10-19.”

snip

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/life...s/news-story/995e5cb71b3e8d7d4ae159f92549b8d0

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Okieman Comment: A couple of interesting graphs in the tweets incorporated into the article.
 
I haven't seen anything to convince me that Omicron is putting under 5's in the hospital, vs Delta. "may be" is a weasel phrase.

"omicron variant may be hospitalising more children and pregnant women than in previous waves"
 
Still no evidence that the children have Omicron, or that they don't and have Delta instead. Also, the current hospitalization rate doesn't exclude other causes entirely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSfPK-amgKw
Sick children in South Africa

358,770 views
Dec 4, 2021

Dr. John Campbell

1.71M subscribers

South Africa, Official says number of children sick with COVID-19 is not cause for panic
 
Children hospitalised with ‘moderate to severe’ covid symptoms
Kate Schneider

snip

Dr Mathivha said the hospital is reportedly admitting around 5-10 children at a time.

She also told of a 15-year-old who died after their condition rapidly deteriorated following a Covid-19 infection, and a 17-year-old who has been placed in ICU on a ventilator with coronavirus-related pneumonia.

It’s not yet clear if they both had the Omicron variant.

snip

“We are now seeing them [children] coming in with moderate to severe symptoms needing supplemental oxygen, needing supportive therapy, needing to stay in hospital for quite a number of days.

“But what really broke my heart yesterday was a 15-year-old previously well child, no illness. Two day history of fever, comes into the hospital, tests positive for covid and literally deteriorates in front of our eyes and nothing, no supportive therapy that we could do could help him.

snip

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/h...s/news-story/0647b966791165a344734263ab0a5324

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Okieman Comment: It is my opinion that this is not something being discussed or reported on extensively because of the potential for panic and disruption to society. This is a very significant mistake if so. Follow the link and read the article to see what they have to say about hospitals and there capability to accommodate children. I recognize that we are still waiting to see how this variant effects people, but if it overwhelms hospitals with children then the worst of this pandemic is still before us.
 
S.African official says children sick with COVID-19 have mild infections

By Alexander Winning

JOHANNESBURG, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Higher hospital admissions among children during a fourth wave of COVID-19 infections in South Africa that has been driven by the Omicron coronavirus variant should not prompt panic as infections have been mild, a health official said on Saturday.

A large number of infants admitted with COVID-19 last month in Tshwane, the metropolitan area that includes the capital Pretoria, raised concerns that the newly identified Omicron could pose greater risks for young children than other variants.

snip

Ntsakisi Maluleke, a public health specialist in the Gauteng province that includes Tshwane and the biggest city Johannesburg, told Reuters that out of the 1,511 COVID-positive patients in hospitals in the province 113 were under 9 years old, a greater proportion than during previous waves of infection.

snip

https://www.reuters.com/world/afric...-with-covid-19-is-not-cause-panic-2021-12-04/

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Okieman Comment: Take a look at the very first sentence in this article. It says "Higher hospital admissions" and then it says "should not prompt panic as infections have been mild". I'm sorry, but mild infections do not lead to hospital admissions. Anytime any government official says "do not panic" I promptly understand it to say "this is something worthy of panic". There are just so many things wrong about that first sentence.
 
Also, it is well known in pandemic planning circles that when a child dies, it is a "high impact" death. Not only is the child lost to society but also the parents, grandparents, and others who loved that child. This is a very good reason to have this thread on the site. Not the first time we have carried a thread of this nature. Please see:

The dead children thread - Pandemic A/H1N1 2009-2010
 
I agree with having the thread. I just think we have to be aware that currently the global mass vaccination program is poised to move to very young children, so there could be an agenda that overstates the situation in SA as far as young children. I think we have to dig for the context of all information presented in the media.

At this point I still see Delta as the greatest disease threat to children via the loss of parents. I just read of another Delta death of a father under age 40 locally in the US. (Only risk seemed to be weight.) The social damage of the loss of a parent is huge and the trauma inflicted both materially and psychologically can have generational impact.
 
One doctor there said she thought many admissions in the case of children were precautionary. With an unknown there is fear of a turn for the worse taking place overnight. Parents in these cases could be well off, or there is a good free system.
 
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19...but-symptoms-mild-in-omicron-hotspot-12484607

COVID-19: South Africa doctors see 'skyrocketing' cases in vaccinated and unvaccinated but symptoms 'mild' in Omicron hotspot

By Philip Whiteside, international news reporter, and Mukelwa Hlatshwayo, Africa producer
Friday 3 December 2021 06:21, UK

GPs confirm the observations of World Health Organisation officials that, so far, the new variant of COVID-19 presents mainly mild symptoms but say it is too early to know if the virus will not be more severe in its later stages.
....

Dr Modi said many of the younger patients at his practice were not vaccinated, reflecting the national picture in South Africa, but older ones were more likely to have had the jab.

He said most of the patients he was seeing were unvaccinated, but among those who had been inoculated, the symptoms were "a bit milder".

Neither doctor was seeing a rise in the number of patients having to go to hospital, but both said it was too early to draw conclusions as it often takes several weeks before symptoms can deteriorate.
Both also said there were no signs at this stage that infants were being unduly affected, as suggested by media reports earlier in the week which said that children under two were accounting for an unexpectedly large proportion of COVID cases.

Dr Fanaroff said: "I know some of the reports coming out of South Africa say that it is affecting mainly only young people, [but] it's not really what we are seeing as GPs in Johannesburg. We are seeing it affect a whole spectrum."

Although there is no official data yet available, in the past couple of days, doctors and health chiefs from Botswana, Scotland and other parts of South Africa have also suggested that the variant may be no more likely to result in the need for hospital treatment.

The views of the South African doctors Sky spoke to mirrored the reflections of senior South African health officials...
 
Okieman said:
Children hospitalised with ‘moderate to severe’ covid symptoms
Kate Schneider

snip

Dr Mathivha said the hospital is reportedly admitting around 5-10 children at a time.

She also told of a 15-year-old who died after their condition rapidly deteriorated following a Covid-19 infection, and a 17-year-old who has been placed in ICU on a ventilator with coronavirus-related pneumonia.

It’s not yet clear if they both had the Omicron variant.

snip

“We are now seeing them [children] coming in with moderate to severe symptoms needing supplemental oxygen, needing supportive therapy, needing to stay in hospital for quite a number of days.

“But what really broke my heart yesterday was a 15-year-old previously well child, no illness. Two day history of fever, comes into the hospital, tests positive for covid and literally deteriorates in front of our eyes and nothing, no supportive therapy that we could do could help him.

snip

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/he...734263ab0a5324

------------------------------

Okieman Comment: It is my opinion that this is not something being discussed or reported on extensively because of the potential for panic and disruption to society. This is a very significant mistake if so. Follow the link and read the article to see what they have to say about hospitals and there capability to accommodate children. I recognize that we are still waiting to see how this variant effects people, but if it overwhelms hospitals with children then the worst of this pandemic is still before us.
Click to expand...

I found her full interview on video:

More children admitted with COVID-19 symptoms to hospitals: Prof Rudo Mathivha

11,512 views
Dec 4, 2021


 
Prof Rudo Mathivha is Director of Critical Care Medicine at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital. It's in Johannesburg and the other doctors in the article I posted who aren't seeing the same trends are also located in that city. Her hospital is the 3rd largest in the world, largest in the Southern Hemisphere, so she would see more patients and maybe the sickest since it is a teaching hospital. Being a teaching hospital, it would have the sickest children as regular patients - cancer, HIV, autoimmune, etc. Dr. Mathivha is also responsible for preparedness, so has to be considering worse case scenarios.

But she described only one patient with no pre-existing conditions, a 15-yr-old, who died in this new wave. That is tragic but doesn't make for a doomsday virus currently. A US child in TX, 12 yrs old, died during the delta wave. He had no current pre-existing conditions, but had asthma as a young child. He had been ill, then felt better a couple of days later and went back to his hobby of model building. (Glues and solvents) He relapsed and died. Again, tragic, but it was weeks ago and a rare event. There are going to be outliers, either due to genetics or a synergistic environmental exposure.

There is strong vaccine messaging in that video that I noticed made people skeptical in the comments. But she did say she does NOT think children under 12 yrs of age should be vaccinated. She said it would be experimentation at this point. She recommended protecting them in other ways because she is seeing an increase in admissions.

I still don't think we have certainty that her patients had omicron. In this interview towards the end she admits no samples had been sequenced at that point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUfEVm28wM8

Symptoms were getting more common in younger people by at least early Oct, according to Geert Vanden Bossche. Was it omicron then?

https://www.voiceforscienceandsolida...forgivable-sin
October 8, 2021
The unforgivable sin

...
...But what about our healthy youngsters and children as these age groups are thought to have excellent innate, pre-existing immune effector cells (2) but are now also increasingly contracting severe Covid-19 disease. Could this be due to spike(S)-specific Abs that young and healthy children may harbor for up to 8 weeks after they contracted asymptomatic infection and that outcompete their innate protective Abs (3)? If this is true, this would imply that only a small part of young and unvaccinated people are susceptible to severe disease (i.e., those who get quite rapidly re-exposed to Sars-CoV-2 after previous infection) but that the vast majority of them are still protected from severe disease, regardless of which Sars-CoV-2 lineage is predominant in the circulating viral population. This seems, indeed, to be the case! Or do some of our ‘experts’ believe that the unvaccinated children and youngsters who don’t get Covid-19 disease have simply not been exposed to the virus at all? But how could that happen given the fact that in most countries the pandemic started over 1.5 years ago and that we’re now dealing with highly infectious variants and that infection prevention measures have largely been relaxed?
 
A possible explanation for the rise of children in hospital is RSV...it made a comeback in North America in fall...unusual since it's a winter illness. To confirm Omicron is the reason, they need to do more testing.
 
South Africa Hospitals Jammed with Omicron Patients

snip

Hospitals in South Africa’s Gauteng province, which contains two of the country’s biggest cities, are packed with people infected with the omicron variant. Doctors say most of the patients haven’t been vaccinated, and an alarming number of them are children under the age of five-years-old.

“There’s been a rather rapid rise in hospital admissions with patients who have COVID, whether they’re presenting with COVID pneumonia or severe COVID disease," Dr. Abdullah said.

"All of the hospitals in Tshwane are seeing an upsurge, and the COVID bed occupancy is increasing 30% to 40% per day, over the last few days,” he said.

snip

https://www.voanews.com/a/south-afr...ariant-drives-new-covid-19-wave-/6340912.html
 
Concern over bed capacity as more babies test positive for COVID-19
Monday 6 December 2021 - 7:45am

JOHANNESBURG - More babies are testing positive for the Coronavirus in Gauteng.

This is as the province faces the fourth wave of infections.

Two of the province’s big hospitals Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital and Steve Biko say many children being admitted are now testing positive for the virus and there are concerns over the bed capacity if the trend continues.

The government is also ramping up its vaccination programme ahead of the festive season.

https://www.enca.com/news/concern-over-bed-capacity-more-babies-test-positive-covid-19

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Also see video which is part of the article.
 
Most young people aren't vaccinated there, but it sounds like enough have natural immunity to make these claims, even though I don't think scientists are done with their analysis.

"Health authorities say omicron is re-infecting some people who have been vaccinated, but mostly their symptoms are not severe.

One of the country’s top epidemiologists, Salim Abdool Karim, told VOA that current vaccines should provide “good protection” against omicron. "
 
The video makes it clear that babies are testing positive, but it didn't say that they are being admitted or even have symptoms. They could be getting tested because someone else in the family is ill. One of the doctors did say that pregnant women who are infected tend to have premature births and have to be admitted. I don't know if the numbers are recently higher but he is concerned because there are 'a lot' of them.
There is certainly a spike going on and hospital staff are worried about the future. I think they had a rough time with Delta, too.
 
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