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The number of children hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States hit a record high of just over 1,900 on Saturday, as hospitals across the South were stretched to capacity fighting outbreaks caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant. The Delta variant, which is rapidly spreading among mostly the unvaccinated portion of the U.S. population, has caused hospitalizations to spike in recent weeks, driving up the number of pediatric hospitalizations to 1,902 on Saturday, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (Borter, 8/15)

It had started on July 1 when she could no longer smell her uncle’s cologne. Caia Alexx Morris, 13, had been sitting on the couch texting friends, and as other family members joked about the overpowering scent, it hit her that she had no idea what they were talking about. She had no other symptoms at the time. But two days later, she was diagnosed with covid-19 and on a ventilator, and has been in intensive care ever since. “Thirty-four days,” her mother Angela Morris reflected last week while at Caia’s bedside at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. 816 hours. 48,960 minutes. And counting. “This is a nightmare.” (Cha, 8/13)

The director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said on Sunday that he is worried about the number of pediatric COVID-19 cases, noting at least 400 children have died from the virus. “We are also seeing a sharp rise in the number of pediatric cases, both unvaccinated kids and vaccinated kids who are getting COVID from this new delta variant. How bad could that spike in pediatric cases get?” Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace asked NIH Director Francis Collins. “That's very worrisome. I think traditionally people kind of considered, ‘Well, you know, kids aren't going to get that sick with this.’ More than 400 children have died of COVID-19. And right now we have almost 2,000 kids in the hospital, many of them in ICU, some of them under the age of four,” Collins said. (Vakil, 8/14)

Pediatricians in U.S. Covid-19 hotspots are anticipating a delta-fueled swell of children with a rare, serious and sometimes deadly virus-linked condition as the fall resumption of school looms. The condition, called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, occurs in a small number of kids who’ve been exposed to the coronavirus. Children can develop the illness even if they haven’t had Covid symptoms, and week-long intensive care unit stays are not uncommon. (Edney, 8/14)

Preliminary findings by U.S. researchers suggest children born during the COVID-19 pandemic show lower IQ scores than those who were born before January 2020, but the underlying causes are still unknown. It may be due to the first 1,000 days of a child’s life being the most crucial to development. The findings were posted in medRxiv ahead of peer review on Aug. 11, stemming from a survey among roughly 605 children in Rhode Island, most of them White, including 39 born in 2018 and 2019. (Holt, 8/14)