Coronavirus Updates: Cases in children rise to record levels

September 09, 2021

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Important developments in the pandemic.

By Ben Guarino
with Lindsey Bever

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The latest

Pediatric infections are surging as the new school year is underway. Data collected by the American Academy of Pediatrics show new cases among children and teenagers have reached the highest weekly level since the pandemic's start, at more than 250,000 for the week ending Sept. 2 — more than a fourth of all new cases that week in the U.S. Although many infections in children are mild or asymptomatic, some can be severe. There were 2,400 children hospitalized with covid-19 in the previous week, according to The Post's tracker, the most yet in the outbreak.

Two school districts, one in Clarion, Pa., and the other in Alexandria, Va., illustrate the vast difference in prevention tactics U.S. school boards and administrators are using to control spread. Few students wear face coverings to school in Clarion, where masks are optional. In Alexandria, almost all children wear masks in line with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics. In both communities, parents and school leaders believe they are making the correct choices.

Thirteen school employees have died in the Miami area since mid-August, a toll on Florida educators that is all but certain to increase. It may also be an undercount, because deaths from covid-19 among staff are collected only anecdotally, a Miami-Dade County Public Schools spokeswoman said. Deaths among school staff can be eye-opening events in some cities and towns. In Texas, after two middle school teachers died, masks became mandatory at a suburban school district outside Waco.

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Is the delta-fueled surge coming to its peak? That depends on where you look. In Florida, delta's rampage through the state may have crested, leaving record-breaking case counts and broken hearts in its wake. Cases have dropped from a daily high of 22,000 to 19,000, though it remains to be seen what effects the Labor Day holiday may have had on transmission. Consequences of Florida's surge include the potential for new forms of the virus to arise: "Remember that every time you allow it to continue to have high transmission, you are facilitating the creation of a worse variant," one infectious-disease expert told The Post.

A U.S. plan for additional coronavirus vaccines has not been finalized, despite intentions the Biden administration announced earlier this summer. Health reporter Joel Achenbach documents the confusion around booster shots that vaccinated people may be feeling — or, in some instances, that leads them to get additional, not-yet-authorized doses. "You know what's happening: People are just doing what they want," one primary care doctor said. "I know of patients who have gotten a booster four months after their second dose."

Federal regulators say they need more data to make a decision on boosters, especially for people who received the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine. That's in part why some of the 14 million Americans who had a J&J dose feel left out of the national vaccine conversation. Despite the strong protection this vaccine continues to show against severe disease and hospitalization, a few J&J recipients say the wait for more information has been nerve-wracking.

Other important news

More than 7 million people have lost jobless benefits with the expiration of three federal unemployment programs this week.

A Florida judge again ruled against Gov. Ron DeSantis over school mask mandates, allowing schools there to require face coverings.

Idaho, a state with one of the lowest vaccination rates, has begun to ration medical care in some hospitals where staff and beds are in short supply.

The National Institutes of Health recently awarded $1.67 million to scientists to study whether vaccination affects menstrual cycles.

A judge in Ohio reversed another judge's order telling clinicians to administer ivermectin to a covid-19 patient. Doctors at the hospital had told the patient's wife ivermectin could interfere with the medication the man was receiving, according to a lawsuit.

Guide to the pandemic

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Guides: Finding vaccine appointments | Vaccines | Variants | Masks

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Your questions, answered

"Is there a test to measure immunity to covid-19? That is, can we tell if the vaccine took, or if we've developed natural immunity?" — Chad in Arizona

Yes, scientists can absolutely measure antibodies produced by the coronavirus vaccine and by natural infection from covid-19. There are even fancy tests that researchers can use to distinguish between those produced by some vaccines and the actual virus.

But because scientists are still learning about the virus and because the immune system is such a complex machine, an antibody test may not tell the whole story. That is, it may not show whether a person is protected or how protected that person is from the disease, said William Moss, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Here's why:

First, commercial antibody tests may not be searching for the antibodies that protect against infection. Moss said many tests done in commercial laboratories measure a variety of antibodies — but not necessarily the ones that stop the virus. Neutralizing antibody tests measure the neutralizing antibodies that bind to the spike protein and block the virus from entering healthy cells, thereby keeping it from replicating in the body, he said. But, he said, these tests are not widely available.

Second, although scientists have a clearer grasp these days of what level of immunity is protective, there is no magic number.

"There is a strong correlation between the levels of neutralizing antibodies and protection, but we've not yet defined a cutoff and I'm not sure we'll be able to," Moss said.

"What we would like to be able to say is that anybody levels above a certain threshold are protective and that antibody levels below a certain threshold are not protective. But biology is not that simple," he added.

And, in any case, antibodies are only part of it.

The immune system also produces memory cells, white blood cells known as memory B cells and protective T cells. So even when antibody levels wane over time, the immune system can still call on those memory cells to respond — B cells start making more antibodies, while T cells work to attack and kill other cells infected with the virus.

So yes, you can get a blood test to see whether you have antibodies against the coronavirus, but it may not tell you much more than that. That's why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and many medical experts agree that antibody testing is not recommended to assess immunity.