Denton County Public Health released case numbers and data yesterday even though it was a holiday weekend which was helpful but the jump in numbers both across all ages in the Denton County and in the pediatric population indicates an acceleration of the community spread of the virus.
The increase was enough that I had to reformat the Y-axes of my graphs. That’s not good.
Two graphs again for this post, first one is the seven day average of new pediatric cases in the county. I've added a faint blue line that represents the new pediatric COVID cases reported each day. The second graph is the same data, but as a seven day average of pediatric cases per 100,000, using the pediatric population of Denton County as the cohort (225,615 kids in our county). The orange vertical bars the the new pediatric COVID cases reported each day.
TAKE HOME MESSAGES
1/ Keep in mind that official DCPH case numbers are likely an undercount as home rapid antigen tests are not reported to the county health department.
2/ Even if we account for Saturday and Sunday, the number of pediatric cases and cases across all age groups in the county is very significant. There were 879 new pediatric COVID cases reported by DCPH yesterday. Even if I were to divide that up between Saturday and Sunday, it is still an increase from last week. Were were averaging about 290 pediatric cases a day last week, which is still too high.
3/ While pediatric hospitalizations and death from COVID are uncommon, we already know that kids who have had COVID have a 2.5X increased risk for developing diabetes. The pancreas, the organ that makes insulin, is one of the targets for the virus. Epidemiological data from the UK now shows that the number of children with Long COVID has doubled since the start of their Omicron surge and the number of kids battling Long COVID symptoms in the UK more than 12 months has increased dramatically.
4/ Every student in the school districts and every child in this county is part of a household and that household may have family members who are at risk for serious COVID infection in unvaccinated or getting infected despite vaccination. It may be age, cancer treatment, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, chronic lung disease. Approximately 65% of American adults have at least one risk factor for serious COVID infection. That means the majority of kids have at least one parent or two who are at high risk of serious infection. Enacting a mask mandate and earnest social distancing measures in the schools doesn't just protect our children, it protects their families as well.
Failure to act resolutely by the school districts represents an extraordinary failure of moral leadership and citizenship.