Weekly COVID-19 child cases in US drop below 100,000 for the first time since last August

WASHINGTON - Weekly child COVID-19 cases dropped below 100,000 for the first time since early August 2021, according to the latest report of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association updated Monday.

For the week ending March 3, almost 69,000 additional child COVID-19 cases were reported across the country. This marked the first time weekly child cases had dropped below 100,000 since August last year, said the report.

It was also the 6th consecutive weekly decrease of child COVID-19 cases from the pandemic peak of 1,150,000 added the week ending Jan. 20, according to the report.

Reported COVID-19 cases among children spiked dramatically in 2022 during the Omicron variant surge, and over 4.8 million child cases were reported since the beginning of January.

Over 12.7 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic in the country. Almost 670,000 of these cases were added in the past 4 weeks, according to the report.

Since the first week of last September, there have been nearly 7.7 million additional child cases in the United States, according to the report.