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Florida pediatric chiefs: Take threat of childhood COVID seriously - Palm Beach Post

Florida pediatric chiefs: Take threat of childhood COVID seriously - Palm Beach Post

Jan 14, 2022 1 min, 19 secs

As chairs of pediatrics in Florida’s medical schools, we are unified in our fight to protect Florida’s children against COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, deaths and long-term consequences.

children have died of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.

Another 55 children have died of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a late result of COVID-19 infection, and there is emerging evidence that some children, even those with mild symptoms, experience “long-haul” COVID with long-lasting breathing, heart, brain and cognitive problems, including diabetes risk.

We urgently need a Florida state online dashboard that provides daily updated pediatric data on numbers of pediatric COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, intensive-care-unit admissions, MIS-C cases and deaths. This dashboard should also provide data by county to identify hot spots and outbreaks; vaccination rates; and infection rates among children who are unvaccinated, received at least one vaccine dose and received all recommended doses.

• We urgently need to improve how we communicate with parents about the importance of COVID-19 vaccines, counteract misinformation and increase vaccination rates.

We must work to increase booster vaccines in children because the current omicron surge threatens further disruption of our schools.

Compared with their white counterparts, Black, Latino and Asian children have lower rates of COVID-19 testing but are more likely to be infected; Black and Latino children and those with chronic illnesses or developmental disabilities are more likely to be hospitalized and develop MIS-C; and Latino, Black and Native American children have higher death rates.

Mark Hudak is chair of pediatrics at the University of Florida College of Medicine — Jacksonville

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