:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/adn/HP7WQNM655DDRCHGWNPKIH4GVI.jpg)
Citing increased hospitalization rates of teenagers with COVID-19 in March and April, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky urged parents to vaccinate their teens to protect them from an illness that can be severe even among young people.
“I am deeply concerned by the numbers of hospitalized adolescents and saddened to see the numbers of adolescents who required treatment in intensive care units or mechanical ventilation,” Walensky said in a statement that was released Friday alongside a new study looking at trends in hospitalization among adolescents with the disease.
“Much of this suffering can be prevented,” Walensky added, urging “parents, relatives and close friends to join me and talk with teens” about the importance of prevention strategies and to encourage vaccination.
The study showed that nearly one-third of those teenagers hospitalized with COVID-19 during a surge of cases early this year required intensive care, and 5% required mechanical ventilation.
While most COVID-19 hospitalizations occur in older adults, severe disease that requires hospitalization has been shown to occur in all age groups. Covid-19 hospitalization rates among adolescents declined in January and February 2021, the report said, but increased during March and April, even as hospitalization rates stabilized for those 65 and older, likely because of their higher rates of vaccination.
Researchers suggest the increased hospitalization among adolescents in March and April may be related to several factors, including more transmissible and potentially more dangerous virus variants, larger numbers of youths returning to school, and changes in physical distancing, mask-wearing and other prevention behaviors.
If those prevention measures had not been practiced at all, “the rates of COVID-19-associated hospitalization might have been substantially higher,” the report said.
A coronavirus vaccine wasn’t recommended for use in 12- to 15-year-olds until last month.
Even though the study is of a small group of adolescents, CDC officials expressed concern about the potential for severe disease and stressed the importance not just of vaccination, but of continued mask-wearing and other preventive behaviors until they are fully vaccinated.
“Vaccination is our way out of this pandemic,” Walensky said. “I continue to see promising signs in CDC data that we are nearing the end of this pandemic in this country; however, we all have to do our part and get vaccinated to cross the finish line.”
The study looked at 204 youths ages 12 to 17 who were hospitalized between Jan. 1 and March 31; about 31% were admitted to an intensive care unit and 5% required invasive mechanical ventilation. None of the youths died.
About 70% of the adolescents in the study had at least one underlying medical condition, the most common being obesity. But nearly 30% had no reported underlying condition, the report said, “indicating that healthy adolescents are also at risk for severe COVID-19- associated disease.”
Among the 204 teens, 52% were female, 31% were Latino, and 36% were Black.
Researchers said the cumulative COVID-19 hospitalization rates for the adolescents during Oct. 1, 2020 through April 24, 2021 were 2.5 to 3 times higher than seasonal influenza-associated hospitalization rates during three recent flu seasons.
Researchers said hospitalization rates may be underestimated since some clinicians may not have ordered tests for the virus, and adolescents hospitalized with the rare but serious inflammatory syndrome known as Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children might not be identified if testing took place more than 14 days after hospital admission.