Many Seattle-area kids with Covid are old enough to be vaccinated

About half of Seattle Children’s Covid patients during this recent surge were children who could but weren’t vaccinated.

This is what Dr. Danielle Zerr, the director of the Infectious Disease Hospital.

“It’s so important to get vaccinated as soon as you can,” she said.

“If children in your home are too young to be vaccinated, if we can vaccinate everyone around them and observe strategies like wearing masks, we will go very far and protect the children,” she said.

By the end of October, the Food and Drug Administration could approve the Pfizer vaccine for children five years and older.

The number of Covid patients at Seattle Children’s Hospital has fallen from its peak in early September.

Dr. Zerr says most of the hospital’s beds are still full, even though Covid shots at Seattle Children’s have declined. This is because many children are hospitalized with other respiratory diseases and mental emergencies.

In Seattle’s public schools, 184 students have tested positive for the coronavirus since the school year began on September 1. That is less than half a percent (0.4%) of the 51,500 students in the district.

The district does not break down these cases by age or vaccination status of the student concerned, but rather indicates how many cases each school has seen in total.

The school with the most cases is Garfield High School. There, 13 students tested positive for the corona virus. It is followed by the Chief Sealth International High School with eight cases.

About two-thirds of schools with at least one case (44 out of 74 schools) had only one or two cases.