Your Health: The ABCs of Delta's Risks for Children

 "With the Delta variant of Covid-19 infecting more children, many parents are worried about how to keep their unvaccinated young kids safe as schools reopen and extracurricular activities resume.

The best protection against Delta, doctors and public-health officials say, is vaccination. But that doesn't directly help children under 12, who are ineligible for the shots. So parents must weigh the risks and benefits of fall activities, from in-person school to sports, play dates and birthday parties.

Most parents by now know the basics: Masks reduce transmission and outdoors is safer than indoors. Beyond that, doctors suggest some principles to guide decision-making this fall. Give priority to your most important activities, they say, and skip others. Within your selected activities, look for ways to lessen risk.

"Almost nothing at this point is zero-risk," says Leana Wen, an emergency physician and public-health professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "Do those activities and reduce risk in those activities, and then try to cut out the other activities that are higher-risk and lower-value."

Risk accumulates with each activity, she notes. Don't assume that if you are engaging in one higher-risk activity that you might as well do others.

Scientists are still learning about the Delta variant's impact on children. Children, including teens, constitute a small proportion of all hospitalizations, making up roughly 1.6% to 3.6% of total Covid-19 hospitalizations among states reporting such data, according to an American Academy of Pediatrics weekly report.

However, the number of Covid-19 cases in children has steadily increased since the beginning of July, according to the AAP. There was a 7% increase in the number of child Covid-19 cases between July 29 and Aug. 12.

Pediatric hospitalizations for the coronavirus have also been rising, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The seven-day average of child hospitalizations reached a high of 281 for the period between Aug. 12 and Aug. 18.

For many families, in-person school will be the highest-priority activity. Public-health officials generally agree that school is the most worthwhile risk for children to take. It is difficult for parents to control their child's school environment, and some districts aren't following public-health guidelines that recommend masking and other precautions. Even if your children's school doesn't require masks, you can still reduce risk by masking your own kids. Doctors suggest using a high-quality mask such as a three-ply surgical mask, an N95, a KN95 or a KF94.

After-school care is another essential activity for many families, but different options carry different risk levels. An after-school program based in the same school that children attend may follow similar protocols, and there may be less mixing among kids, notes Elizabeth Stuart, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Another reduced-risk option: Setting up an after-school group with a small number of children from the same class at someone's house, and making sure the babysitter is vaccinated, Dr. Stuart suggests.

If a child is taking an indoor class, such as gymnastics or basketball, ask if the instructors are vaccinated. "I would want anyone interacting closely with kids to be vaccinated," Dr. Stuart says.

Outdoors is still generally lower-risk for children to be unmasked when playing sports or on play dates, Dr. Wen says. Informal indoor social activities like play dates and birthday parties can be higher risk because they often happen without the precautions in place at schools and other organized activities.

One option is to create a pandemic pod -- or revisit the one you set up last year -- where families agree to socialize indoors with one or two families that share a similar level of risk. When community transmission is high, consider limiting social activities that take place in more crowded settings, such as trips to the mall or indoor movie theaters, Dr. Stuart says.

"We're trying to find that balance of not totally locking down but also making choices that sort of move down the risk ladder," she says." [1]

Vaccinated adults are able to transfer the virus to your kids with the same efficiency as not vaccinated adults.

1. Your Health: The ABCs of Delta's Risks for Children
Reddy, Sumathi.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 25 Aug 2021: A.11.