“In the face of a highly contagious delta variant that is spreading intensely among children and adolescents, resolute action is expected.”

platform. Two weeks before the start of the school year, in the face of a highly contagious delta variant that is spreading intensely among children and adolescents, resolute measures are expected to protect their health in schools.

The delta variant is currently spreading at a high speed among young people. In the UK, the disease has spread mainly from children: more than a million pupils have been absent in the last month of school. In the United States, 121,000 cases of children and teens were reported last week alone.

In France, in Landes, on the eve of the holiday, the infection rate in schools has already exceeded that of adults, even among children 3-5 years old. This summer, the gatherings have alarmingly doubled In day centers and summer camps. On August 2, the incidence among 0-9-year-olds was already high, exceeding the 200 per 100,000 threshold in three regions, while their positivity rate was twice that of the general population.

Closing chapters in the first case

The hospitalization rate for children aged 0-19 years is increasing in countries where the delta variant predominates. In the United States, up to 1.9% of children who test positive are hospitalized in some states. In Georgia, 7 out of 100,000 children are currently hospitalized with Covid-19. In France, over the past year, 1.2% of children aged 0-9 who tested positive were hospitalized, and the number of hospitalized cases is now double the number it was last year on the same date, the number of people aged Their ages are between 10 and 19, which is the quadruple number.

Covid-19 can also cause complications in the medium term. According to the scientific literature and UK government data, between 2% and 8% of affected children have persistent symptoms. In addition, it is not possible to exclude long-term consequences or complications of the disease, which may still be unknown. Finally, if deaths remain very rare, they do exist and all are tragedies whose number could increase with increased viral circulation.

Alerts are proliferating all over the world. In the United States, Canada, India, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain… Pediatricians and scientific societies are calling for greater protection for children under 12 years old. It is our turn today to sound the alarm.

Effective pollution prevention measures should be adopted from the beginning of the school year. The protocol published on July 28 specifies Schools framework with four levels of measures : It is necessary, without further delay, to establish the regional level of their application, epidemiological indicators, as well as thresholds that lead to the transition from one level to another.

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