Children Account for More New COVID-19 Cases as the Pandemic Rolls On

Children are less likely to catch the coronavirus than adults and tend to have less severe symptoms if they do get infected. But as more people get tested and researchers learn more about COVID-19, children's vulnerability to the virus is becoming more apparent.

A study published Tuesday in the journal Pediatrics finds there have been more than a half million children diagnosed with COVID-19 as of Sept. 10, a rate of 729 cases per 100,000 children. Researchers from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association analyzed coronavirus case data from April to September from 49 state health departments as well as those of New York City, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and Guam. (New York State does not report coronavirus cases by age.)

Children under 18 make up nearly 23 percent of people in the United States, but researchers found they've so far made up only 10 percent of the more than 6.3 million cumulative U.S. cases of coronavirus, as the chart below shows.

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