*Hospitalisations of Children - Thread*
The Dept. of Education said "reopening of schools has led to no significant change in children contracting Covid-19" & "the proportion of cases found among the 4-18 age group has remained steady since August." (1) https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/1009/1170464-schools/

The reality is I cannot actually verify the data between the 15-18 age group as the DoH have grouped the 15-24 age group together, thus it is near impossible to fact check what is happening with 15-18 y/o school going children. The DoH need to verify this ASAP (2)

@Evie_Nevin has been keeping track and sharing cases amongst young people for months now and what we can see is that there are constant rises in positive cases in children. She inspired me to keep track a few months back too. (3) https://twitter.com/Evie_Nevin/status/1312496715249770496?s=20

Yesterday, @killianodris also questioned the statements from the Dept of Education (and others) and he broke down the data for children aged up from 0-15 and drew the same conclusion - cases in young people are rising steadily since August. (4) https://twitter.com/killianodris/status/1315088491848634368?s=20

While 0-4 age group may not be in school, many go to creche/childcare. The numbers in this age group start rising in July after reopening of creches on June 29th. Furthermore, cases in 5 - 14 age groups have risen sharply since August. More worringly, is the sharp increase..(5)

...of CHILDREN BECOMING HOSPITALISED. This is the marker which many use to determine the seriousness of the situation in relation to Covid-19. To date, 176 children have been hospitalised from Covid-19. As of the 8th Oct, there were 11 children in hospital and 1 in ICU (6)

It can be seen the rise in positive tests in children correlates with a rise in hospitalisations from August onwards.
Remember also, we are also only on day 9 of October- where will we be at the end of the month?(7)

How can the Govt now still stand over the fact that schools have no role to play in transmission of Covid-19? How can they say children don't get very sick from this disease? How they can advocate that all children go to school when many are in high risk groups/families? (8)

There are thousands of medically vulnerable children in Ireland - and more who have family members who are in the very high risk groups. These children should be able to immediately have access to remote learning from their schools, and not have to... (9)

...be either removed from public schools to homeschool (which is expensive/unfair) or have parents struggling to help children with schoolwork through emails etc.
I will reiterate that this is not teachers faults - this is down to the Dept of Education to do this ASAP. (10)

Recap:
I don't have data of 15-18 y/o group - it is NOT available.
If schools remain open and parents send their children in, that is their right.
If parents don't want to send their children because of higher risks, that is their right too. But they need help. (11)

Information in my graphs/data is directly taken from the CovidHub and I have asked a public health specialist to review it for me (12) https://covid19ireland-geohive.hub.arcgis.com/pages/detailed-profile-of-cases

@DonnellyStephen @CMOIreland @roinnslainte @HSELive @NormaFoleyTD1 @Education_Ire #edchatie @LeoVaradkar @MichealMartinTD @MaryLouMcDonald @mattcarthy @lukeming @conwaywalsh