Why now is one of the most dangerous times of the pandemic for children

(CNN) – Students returning to the classroom for the new school year will face one of the most dangerous times of the pandemic for children. And officials will have to consider many measures to keep them safe from Covid-19, one expert said.

“We have the most contagious delta variant, we have new waves and a lot of adults who let their guard down, don’t wear masks, don’t get vaccinated,” Dr. Leana Wen told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday. “That is contributing to this really dangerous environment for children.”

The good news is that vaccination rates are increasing in the United States for the first time since June, with more than 500,000 people on average starting their vaccination every day, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Health experts say vaccines are an important step in slowing or stopping the spread of the virus and the most transmissible delta variant.

But children under the age of 12 are still not eligible for vaccines, and for newly vaccinated ones, it takes about six weeks from the first dose to take effect, so many children could still be vulnerable when they start the new school year. .

“My concerns run deep and I am very concerned,” President Joe Biden said when asked about school-age children returning to the classroom and whether schools could not remain open. “I also understand that the reason children get infected is because, in most cases, they live in states and communities with low vaccination rates and they get it from unvaccinated adults. That’s what is happening. So my request for those who are not vaccinated is: think about it. “

While the elderly were once considered the population most vulnerable to the virus, age limitations around vaccines have now left children at higher risk, CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner told Don. CNN’s Lemon.

Wen said it is clear what is required to make school safe for children: layers of protection.

When one layer is removed, such as when social distancing is waived so that students can gather in a classroom, the other layers of protection against viruses become even more crucial, he said. Those layers include at least a three-layer surgical mask, better ventilation, vaccination, and testing.

“Putting all of that together is how we can get children back to school safely,” Wen said.

Time is ticking to authorize vaccines for children, says expert

Currently, covid-19 vaccines are only licensed for people over the age of 12, but many experts and officials have called for efforts to approve vaccines for younger children be accelerated before more children are infected.

“I think time is ticking. As we move into late fall and early winter, you want a vaccine for young children,” Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine adviser for the Administration of Drugs and Medicines, told CNN’s Erica Hill. US Food (FDA). “I certainly hope we have one by then, because the kids need it.”

The FDA understands the public health impact of having a vaccine for young children, but wants to see the necessary data before making a decision, said Offit, director of the Center for Vaccine Education at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, Offit noted that children who are still too young to get the vaccine depend on the eligible adults and teens around them to help protect them by getting vaccinated, which many have yet to do.

“I think as adults, we have really disappointed our children here,” Offit said.

Before the new school year, mandates are up for debate

Until the vaccines can be given to younger children, some officials hope the masks will help slow the spread of the virus.

In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear announced Tuesday that masks will be required at K-12, pre-kindergarten and daycare schools.

“We have reached the point where we cannot allow our children to enter these buildings unprotected, unvaccinated and face this delta variant,” Beshear said. “So I’m going to have the courage to do what I know is right to protect our children.”

In Illinois, Governor JB Pritzker compared compliance with mask-wearing mandates to schools that impose a dress code.

When asked what schools should do when students don’t wear masks, Pritzker said, “Well, school districts have been enforcing dress codes for many, many years, so they are expected to just do the same as they’ve been doing it for literally decades. “

However, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order last month that prohibits school districts from requiring the use of masks, a move that former White House covid-19 adviser Andy Slavitt said is dangerous.

“When school districts try to do the right thing and he overrides them, they both override conservative principles of local control, but more importantly, they put children at real risk,” Slavitt told CNN.

The state is already suffering from the increase in covid-19 cases. In recent days, the federal government has sent 200 ventilators to Florida, as the state has some of the highest per capita hospitalization rates in the U.S., a health administration official confirmed.

Impacts felt in hospitals across the country

The impacts of the spread of the variant can be seen in hospitals around the US.

At Children’s Hospital New Orleans, 18 children are hospitalized with COVID-19 and six are in the pediatric ICU. The number of children battling the disease is unlike anything the hospital has seen at any other time in the pandemic, nurse Kendal Jaffe told CNN’s Nick Valencia.

“Over the last year, we have not seen as many children contracting acute lung disease from covid as we are seeing it now,” he said. “The delta variant is definitely hitting them much harder, much faster than we’ve seen in the past.”

One patient, 17-year-old Nelson, has trouble breathing and his parents thought he was going to die when they brought him in. In another part of the hospital, a girl who has not even celebrated her second birthday is in the ICU.

Health professionals treating adults are also feeling the pressure.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday that the state had experienced its largest single-day spike in ICU admissions since the start of the pandemic, and that weekly covid-19 hospitalizations among people 20 to 49 year olds are now at an all-time high.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said Tuesday that state hospitals are under pressure.

“I’m still looking for a breaking point where we could start to go down again, and while there have been some national predictions about it, we still don’t see it in the data. You can see that we keep increasing, week after week, in our cases.” He said.

CNN’s Deidre McPhillips, Jason Hoffman, Lauren Mascarenhas, Carma Hassan, Rebekah Riess, Giovanna Van Leeuwen, and Rebekah Riess contributed to this report.