Washington, 30 January. COVID-19 was the eighth leading cause of death among children and youth in the United States between August 2021 and July 2022 and the first among infectious or respiratory disease deaths, according to a study published this Monday by the University of Washington. Oxford.
Children and young people up to 19 years of age are less likely to die from COVID-19 than other age groups, but it became the leading cause of death due to infectious and respiratory disease during this period.
This is reflected in the new study by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, which used data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Covid-19 accounted for 2% of deaths in the population between the ages of 0 and 19, ranking itself as the eighth leading cause of death, with a mortality rate of 1 death per 100,000 children and young people, ahead of influenza and pneumonia. ranked as this group.
Currently, conditions arising from the perinatal period are the leading cause of death among children and youth in the US, followed by accidents, congenital malformations, homicides, suicides, cancer, and heart disease.
By age group, COVID-19 was the seventh leading cause of death among 1–4 year olds, sixth among 5–14 year olds, and fifth among 15–19 year olds.
Children under the age of 1 were the most vulnerable, with a Covid-19 death rate of 4 per 100,000 infants.
Deaths spiked during the Delta and Omicron waves, with the most deaths in January 2022.
“If you look at childhood infectious diseases in the US historically, in the period before vaccines were available, hepatitis A, rotavirus, rubella and measles were the leading causes of death,” he says. associate professor and study co-author Robbie M. Park.
But when those diseases are compared to COVID-19, the latter “caused significantly more deaths among children and youth than those other diseases before vaccines were available.”
According to the researchers, the results suggest that vaccination and prevention play an important role in the transmission of the virus and its mitigation among children and youth.
