About 234,000 children under age 18 were hospitalized with confirmed cases of COVID-19 from fall 2020 to spring 2024, according to AAP analysis of data collected by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Beginning in September 2020, all U.S. hospitals were required by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to report the number of patients admitted to their facility with COVID-19 infections through the National Healthcare Safety Network. The reporting requirement ended in April 2024.
The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations varied substantially across time by waves of infection and emergence of new variants (see figure). The largest peak was in winter 2022 during the omicron surge, with 6,527 child hospitalizations the week of Jan. 15. In the final week of the report, April 27, 2024, 310 children with a confirmed COVID-19 case were admitted, among the lowest levels reported during the pandemic.
Starting in January 2022, HHS also required hospitals to break out child admissions by age group (0-4 years, 5-11 years and 12-17 years) in their weekly reports.
While children ages 0-4 comprise about 26% of the U.S. child population, they accounted for 58% of the confirmed COVID-19 hospital admissions from January 2022 to April 2024. This may be related to greater vulnerability or to lower vaccination levels among this age group.
Children were impacted in all areas of the country. The distribution of confirmed child COVID-19 hospital admissions as a proportion of children across region was slightly higher in the South compared to other regions:
- 44% of child hospital admissions in the South (39% of U.S. child population),
- 21% of admissions in the Midwest (21% of population),
- 20% of admissions in the West (24% of population) and
- 15% of admissions in the Northeast (16% of population).
AAP Research has summarized additional details on child COVID-19 hospitalizations drawn from the HHS data at https://bit.ly/4bSJ6MI.
Resources
- AAP News article “AAP survey reveals barriers to routine immunizations”
- Pediatrics article “Successes and Lessons Learned in Responding to the Needs of Pediatricians, Children, and Families During the COVID-19 Pandemic”
- HHS dataset “COVID-19 Reported Patient Impact and Hospital Capacity by State Timeseries”
