Over 3.5 mln child COVID-19 cases reported in US in January

WASHINGTON - Over 3.5 million child COVID-19 cases were reported in the United States in January, as child cases have "spiked dramatically" during the Omicron variant surge, according to the latest report of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association.

More than 11.4 million children in the country have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic, according to the report. Nearly two million of these cases have been added in the past two weeks.

For the week ending Jan 27, over 808,000 additional child COVID-19 cases were reported in the country, said the AAP, adding child cases this week remained "extremely high", triple the peak level of the Delta surge in 2021.

This marked the 25th week in a row child COVID-19 cases in the United States were above 100,000. Since the first week of September, there have been almost 6.4 million additional child cases, according to the AAP.