According to a new study, COVID-19 was the leading infectious disease killer of children and adolescents in the United States between August 2021 and July 2022.
It was also one of the main causes of death for adolescents and teenagers in the United States during the same time period, according to the study.
COVID-19 Deaths In US
The study, which was published Monday (Jan. 30) in the journal JAMA Network Open(opens in new tab), made use of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) database, which includes mortality statistics derived from death certificates.
The study only included deaths in which it was described as the underlying, or principal, cause of death, rather than as a contributing component. During the study period, 821 people aged 19 and under died from the virus, resulting in an overall death rate of around one COVID-19 death per 100,000 people in the age range.
“COVID-19 deaths constituted 2% of all causes of death in this age group,” the researchers reported.
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Key Findings
- COVID-19 is rated eighth among all causes of death among children and young people aged 0 to 19 years in the United States; fifth among all disease-related causes of death; and first among infectious or respiratory disorders.
- COVID-19 ranked seventh (infants), seventh (1-4-year-olds), sixth (5-9-year-olds), sixth (10-14-year-olds), and fifth (15+-year-olds) (15–19-year-olds).
- COVID-19 was the underlying cause of 2% of fatalities in children and adolescents (800 out of 43,000), with an overall death rate of 1.0 per 100,000 people aged 0 to 19. The top cause of mortality (perinatal conditions) had a death rate of 12.7 per 100,000 people; coronavirus ranked ahead of influenza and pneumonia, which each had a death rate of 0.6 per 100,000 people.
- Coronavirus death rates, like many diseases, followed a U-shaped trend over this age range. COVID-19 death rates were highest in newborns under one year old (4.3 per 100,000), second in those aged 15-19 years (1.8 per 100,000), and lowest in those aged 5-9 years (0.4 per 100,000).
- Overall, mortality in children and adolescents was greater during the Delta and Omicron waves compared to previous waves (before July 2021), most likely due to higher infection rates during these periods. Despite this, COVID-19 was the eighth largest cause of mortality in the pre-Delta stage of the pandemic.
- The month with the largest number of COVID-19-related mortality in people aged 0 to 19 was January 2022, with 160 deaths.
Although COVID-19 exacerbates the effects of other diseases (such as pneumonia and influenza), this study focuses on deaths caused directly by COVID-19 rather than those to which COVID-19 was a contributory cause. As a result, these findings are likely to underestimate the true burden of COVID-19-related mortality in this age range.
Children and young people had a much lower overall risk of death from COVID-19 than other age groups. For example, the death rate among all ages in the United States was 109 per 100,000 between 1 August 2021 and 31 July 2022.
However, because deaths among children and young people in the United States are uncommon, the mortality burden is best understood in the context of all other causes of death in this age group.
According to the researchers, with variants still circulating, public health interventions such as immunizations, staying home when unwell, and ventilation continues to play an important role in reducing virus transmission and mitigating severe disease in children and young people.
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