U.S. COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations on the Rise Just Before Thanksgiving

TUESDAY, Nov. 23, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Federal health officials are imploring Americans to get vaccinated as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations start to climb just ahead of the holidays.

There has been an 18 percent increase in the seven-day average of reported COVID-19 infections in the United States and a 6 percent increase in the seven-day average of COVID-19 hospitalizations, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky, M.D., said during a Monday media briefing. Nearly a third of new cases are in Midwestern states, with Michigan and Minnesota reporting more cases per capita than any other states, and all but a dozen states saw cases rise during the past week, Johns Hopkins data show.

Children have not been spared the recent spike in COVID-19 infections, either, with pediatric cases up 32 percent from two weeks ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reported Monday.

There were at least 141,905 new cases among children for the week ending Nov. 18, with children representing more than a quarter of all new COVID-19 cases for the past week, the AAP found. The statistic is stark, because children only account for 22 percent of the U.S. population. When the pandemic began in early 2020, children accounted for fewer than 3 percent of confirmed cases. Since the start of the pandemic, more than 6.8 million children have tested positive for COVID-19, the AAP said in its report.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center

American Academy of Pediatrics