More kids are getting sick from COVID. Is it delta?

Health experts aren't sure if delta makes kids sicker with COVID-19, but doctors say they are seeing otherwise healthy children winding up on ventilators and the ICU.

Throughout much of 2020, parents took comfort in a single silver lining the pandemic: The virus seemed to spare young people, particularly children and toddlers, whose symptoms were considerably milder than the adults around them. The precise reason for this was never quite clear. One theory was that children had fewer “receptors” that could become infected with the virus. Some wondered if kids had better immunity because of frequent exposure to other coronaviruses. Children also were less likely to be burdened by the kind of underlying health conditions plaguing older adults, according to health experts. But the arrival of the delta variant seems to have changed that equation in just a matter of months. Health officials are warning of the steepest surge in COVID hospitalizations among children since the pandemic began, with rates 4.6 times higher than it was just five weeks ago. Those rates now put pediatric hospitalizations on par with the height of the pandemic. But are children now at greater risk than they were last year?