CNN Breaking News: New Omicron variant fills up children's hospitals
A
five-fold increase in pediatric admissions in
New York City this month. Close to double the numbers admitted in Washington, DC. And nationwide, on average,
pediatric hospitalizations are up 35% in just the past week.
Dr. Spinner wants all the kids jabbed.
The highly transmissible
Omicron variant is
teaming up with the busy holiday season to
infect more
children across the
United States than ever before ((ever before???? Omicron is new, right?)), and
children's hospitals are bracing for it to get even
worse.
"I think we are going to see
more numbers now
than we have ever seen
," Dr. Stanley Spinner, who is chief medical officer and vice president at Texas Children's Pediatrics & Urgent Care in Houston, told CNN.
"
Cases are continuing to
rise between
Christmas gatherings and we're going to continue to see
more numbers this week from that,"
Spinner said in a telephone interview.
"It's almost like you can see the
train coming down the track and you're just hoping it doesn't go
off the rails," Dr. Claudia Hoyen
"What's
concerning on the (pediatric) side is that,
unlike the adults -- where they're reporting for the number of adults getting infected relatively low numbers getting hospitalized -- what we're really seeing, we think, is an i
ncreasing number of kids being hospitalized," Spinner said.