1/ There's a "School Aged COVID-19 Surveillance Report" out from @GaDPH about COVID among kids 0-22. It's got some good information, but not a lot we didn't already know, and most of the graphs only go through 8/31, but here's a thread with my key takeaways... #covid19ga #gapol

2/ Statewide, cases among those <18 have been dropping since our July peak, with a small bump in early August as many schools started back up - mostly among 14-17 age range.

3/ Cases among 18-22yo spiked in late August, as colleges returned but data from this past week on the DPH site shows cases in 18-29 range falling in Sept. This is consistent with DPH data from counties with colleges.

4/ Some children and college age cases have been hospitalized - especially during the summer during our peak. Fortunately, these are very low numbers, and a very low rate per case. I track cases, hospitalizations, and deaths weekly from the DPH web site (see below).

5/ Kids also go to the ER - sometimes with COVID or flu (ILI) symptoms. These graphs show % of ER visits for each. Notice the ages are swapped - younger kids are more likely to go for ILI, and older kids more for COVID. This confirms what we know about flu vs COVID in young kids.

6/ Percent positive peaked for 18-22yo in late July like it did for adults, then rose a little in late August with colleges restarting. In 0-17yo, it peaked in early August (around school reopenings) then fell.

7/ School "clusters" increased in August. This is not surprising, nor particularly alarming to me - especially when you consider the definition of a "cluster". It only takes 2 positive tests within 2 week in kids who had contact at school.

8/ Lastly, the report show DPH defines a low case rate as 0-10 cases per 100K over a 14-day period. Some school districts (DeKalb and City of Atlanta at least) are using only 0-5 cases per 100K over a 14-day period as their threshold for returning to full-time F2F school.

9/ You can access the report here if you want to see more: …https://epidemiologyschoolreport.s3.amazonaws.com/SchoolAgeSurveillance831%5B1%5D.html

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