Pediatric hospitalizations for Covid-19 have rapidly increased over the last month in the United States, with the rate of daily new cases reaching an all-time high in the last few days. It’s already far worse than the previous record peak in January. The data visualization below created for Inside Medicine makes it plain to see where we are and where we’ve been. Perhaps more alarming than the raw number of daily hospitalizations in children is the magnitude of the rise in recent weeks. Obviously we cannot predict whether this worrisome trend in pediatric hospitalizations will continue, level off, or drop. But we must not ignore it.

The regions having major pediatric outbreaks should serve as a warning to the rest of us. For example, in Georgia last week, around 7 out of every 100,000 children in the state—not per 100,000 pediatric coronavirus cases, but per living child—were hospitalized for Covid-19. That triples the pediatric hospitalization rate that was observed during the worst weeks of the most recent normal flu season (the winter of 2019-2020), and that’s likely a conservative estimate.†

If we dug into the reporting methodology (which I’ll do with you in the future), we would find that the rate of Covid-19 hospitalizations exceeds the usual rate of influenza hospitalizations by far more than that. Keep in mind that this unprecedented spike in pediatric Covid-19 hospitalizations is occurring in the month of August. Historically, August is the month with the fewest pediatric deaths for respiratory and infectious illnesses.