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Seven Mississippi children are currently in the hospital due to COVID-19 infections, with two of the young people on life support, the state’s top health official announced Tuesday. Mississippi State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs said in a tweet that seven children infected with the virus were in the intensive care unit (ICU) and two of them were on ventilators. (Castronuovo, 7/13)

Mississippi COVID-19 cases have risen almost 25% over the past two weeks and hospitalizations at University of Mississippi Medical Center are at the highest numbers in three months. On Tuesday, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs tweeted that of seven children currently in intensive care due to COVID-19 infections, two are on ventilators. It was not immediately clear whether these children were infected with the Delta variant or had been vaccinated against the virus, their ages or where they are located in the state. (Haselhorst, 7/13)

Children need to be vaccinated against Covid-19, a top advisor to the Food and Drug Administration on children’s vaccines told the agency Thursday. “It just seems silly to think that we’re not going to have to include children as part of that,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and advisor to the FDA. “They can suffer and be hospitalized and occasionally die.” He said 300 kids have died from Covid so far. (Mendez, 7/14)

Children will likely pay the price for adults in the US not getting vaccinated at high enough rates to slow or stop the spread of Covid-19, which has been surging in most states, a vaccine expert said. Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccinologist and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN's Anderson Cooper Tuesday that if vaccination rates among adults and kids 12 and older continue to lag amid increased spread of the virus, the youngest members of the population will be most affected. (Holcombe, 7/14)

If ongoing clinical trials and regulators conclude COVID-19 vaccines in younger children aged 6 to 11 are safe and effective, an expert with the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) said "we would be foolish not to vaccinate" kids. The comments from Dr. Andrew Pavia, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at University of Utah School of Medicine, adjunct professor of internal medicine, professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah and fellow at IDSA, come as the debate over school reopenings intensifies. "As somebody who takes care of very sick kids, it drives me crazy to hear over and over again that the virus is not serious for children," Pavia told a virtual IDSA, CDC briefing Tuesday. "It’s not nearly as serious as it is for adults and particularly for older adults but by every measure, the impact is greater than the impact of influenza." (Rivas, 7/13)

As COVID-19 has ripped through communities, children have often been spared the worst of the disease’s impacts. But the spectre of long COVID developing in children is forcing researchers to reconsider the cost of the pandemic for younger people. The question is particularly relevant as the proportion of infections that are in young people rises in countries where many adults are now vaccinated — and as debates about the benefits of vaccinating children intensify. (Lewis, 7/14)