The beginning of the school year is coinciding with new data showing a startling surge in children and teenagers diagnosed with COVID-19, as a new report finds that nearly half of all pediatric cases of the disease were diagnosed in a single month.

"The pediatric cases are in all of the same states that we know are surging with adults who have disease," said Dr.

Each of those seven states has tallied more than 15,000 COVID-19 cases among young people since the beginning of the pandemic.

Up to July 9, just over 200,000 cases of COVID-19 had been diagnosed in kids and young people in the U.S.

6, an additional 179,990 pediatric cases were reported — an increase of 90 percent in just four weeks.

Still, it appears children are largely spared the most dire health consequences of COVID-19.

Some of those had been diagnosed with an extremely rare but serious disease called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, which is strongly believed to be linked to the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Overall, children make up 9.1 percent of COVID-19 cases nationally.

While it does appear most infections among young people are mild, some children have underlying conditions, such as obesity, putting them at risk for complications.