Over 12.5 mln children in US infected with COVID-19

WASHINGTON - Over 12.5 million children in the United States have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic, according to a new report published Tuesday by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children's Hospital Association.

A total of 12,515,391 child COVID-19 cases had been reported across the country as of Feb 17, and children represented 19 percent of all confirmed cases, according to the report.

COVID-19 cases among children have spiked dramatically across the United States during the Omicron variant surge.

Over 4.6 million child cases were reported since the beginning of January. For the week ending Feb 17, nearly 175,000 additional child COVID-19 cases were reported, according to the report.

Though the weekly increase was down substantially from the peak level of 1,150,000 cases reported the week ending Jan 20, child cases this week "remained very high," said the report.

Over 1.9 million of child COVID-19 cases have been added across the country in the past 4 weeks.

This marks the 28th week in a row child COVID-19 cases in the United States are above 100,000. Since the first week of September, there have been nearly 7.5 million additional child cases, according to the AAP.