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Has COVID risk changed for kids?

Health care workers answer questions about the COVID-19 vaccines.

Shaquita Bell, MD explains that children have always been affected by COVID and with new variants that risk increases for everyone who is unvaccinated.
Yeah. So, a lot of us were relieved at the beginning of the pandemic when we thought, oh, maybe kids won’t be impacted as badly. We were very distracted early on in the pandemic because the mortality rates were so high for older Americans and people in the world. But what we see now is that kids are having increased rates of infection and are doing much more poorly, are getting sicker. And so, our emphasis, our push on protecting our population has really shifted to children. We want our kids to be vaccinated and we want to protect them because they can get coronavirus and they are, if not at the same risk of acquiring coronavirus, even at a higher risk now that we see the variants that are even more contagious and cause more severe symptoms, oftentimes even higher mortality rates.

This information is shared for educational purposes only and should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice. The views expressed are those of the featured medical professional and reflect information available to that professional at time of filming. Always consult a health care provider for any personal health decisions. Click here for vaccine FAQs from the CDC.

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