More than 1,039,464 infants, children, and teens have contracted the coronavirus, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children’s Hospital Association, which uses state health department data to track cases across the country.
Dr. Sally Goza, president of the AAP, said in a statement the country has not seen this many children with the same issue since before color television.
“As a pediatrician who has practiced medicine for over three decades, I find this number staggering and tragic,” Dr. Sally Goza, president of the AAP, said in a statement, according to NBC News. “We haven’t seen a virus flash through our communities in this way since before we had vaccines for measles and polio.”
The New York Times reported in the 10 months since the coronavirus was first discovered, more than 1 million people around the world have died, meaning the virus may already have overtaken tuberculosis and hepatitis in the record books as the world’s deadliest infectious disease.
Dr. Michael Ryan, head of the World Health Organization’s emergencies program, told reporters at a news conference in Geneva Monday that the actual coronavirus numbers are probably higher.
“When you count anything, you never count it perfectly,” Ryan said. “But I can assure you that the current numbers are likely an underestimate of the true toll of COVID.”
After numbers dropped during the spring with people stuck indoors followed by a summer of protests and riots, the number of cases is climbing quickly as the weather changes. Hospitals in Utah, Wisconsin, and Indiana are running low on beds and nurses and are setting overflow facilities to deal with the extra cases.
“Our hospitals are getting overwhelmed,” Republican Utah Gov. Gary Herbert told Politico. “The dramatic increase in infections has put the integrity of our health care system at risk.“
Meanwhile, in Taiwan, where people quickly embraced face masks and socially distanced, residents spent the weekend at Ultra Festival, a 20,000 person weekend music festival.