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Children from minority communities are much more likely to be inflamed and seriously ill. Many have parents who are frontline workers, experts say.
By Roni Caryn Rabin
One of the notable characteristics of the new coronavirus, evident at the beginning of the pandemic, is that it has largely saved children, some are seriously ill, but deaths are few compared to adults.
But other people of color have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19, the coronavirus disease, and recent studies have renewed fears about the vulnerability of young people in these communities.
They are inflamed at higher rates than young whites and hospitalized at rates five to 8 times higher than those of young whites. Children of color make up the overwhelming majority of those who expand a life-threatening complication called multisiste-endemic inflammatory syndrome or MIS-C.
Of the more than 180,000 Americans who died of Covid-19, fewer than a hundred are young, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but young people of color make up the majority of those who died of Covid-19.
The deaths occur with 41 young Hispanics, 24 young blacks, 19 young whites, 3 young Asians, 3 native American/Alaska Native youths and two young multiracial.
The unique vulnerabilities of those young people are emerging at a time when the number of infections among young people is expanding and schools and parents across the country are grappling with decisions made to reopen.
The vulnerability of minority youth to the disease is unique to the United States.Young black people hospitalized in the UK were more likely than whites to be transferred to intensive care and expand MIS-C, according to a study published last week in the journal BMJ..
“Children don’t exist in a vacuum,” dr.Monika K.Goyal, pediatric emergency medicine specialist at Children’s National Hospital in Washington.
Of the 1,000 young people who were tested for Covid-19 in Washington in March and April, nearly a portion of Hispanic youth and nearly a third of young black men tested positive for coronavirus, Dr. Goyal discovered in a recent study.
“They live in houses where their parents or guardians have the luxury of working remotely, so they are most threatened with exposure,” he added.”They are also more likely to live in multigenerational homes.Everything is connected.”
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