News Update

Covid cases increasing rapidly in California children, newspaper reports

Covid cases in California children are surging in pockets of the state, including San Francisco, Santa Clara County and San Diego, the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting.

“It’s absolutely blown up,” Dr. Laurel Schultz, a San Francisco pediatrician told the newspaper in a story published Thursday. About 20 children in her practice tested positive over the three-day Christmas weekend alone, she said.

Most of the children are mildly ill, she said.

Only 15% of Californian children between ages 5 to 11 are vaccinated at all, state data shows, the Chronicle reported.

“That’s way too low,” Michaela George, an assistant professor of global public health at Dominican University in San Rafael. “It needs to be higher than that — or kids will get sick.”

The newspaper reported that “Coronavirus infections in people ages 17 and younger are a growing proportion of California’s total cases: 15.2% as of Dec. 23, up from 13.2% in August, and 11.9% a year ago.”