At least 20 kids are hospitalized at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus and a quarter of them are in the facility’s intensive care unit.
Dr. Rustin Morse, the chief medical officer at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, says the number of kids being hospitalized continues to grow.
“It is concerning to see that the pediatric volume of COVID patients in just one week in our hospital has doubled,” Morse says.
Morse says five of the 20 kids hospitalized there are in intensive care. Two are on ventilators. And he says one of those kids does not have any underlying health conditions.
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital doesn’t release a daily count of children with COVID but its chief of staff, Dr. Patty Manning Courtney, said recently that the facility has been generally seeing higher numbers of cases than hospitals in Columbus and Cleveland.
Pediatric doctors repeatedly say the best way to fight COVID in kids is to get them vaccinated if they are eligible and wearing masks inside buildings and crowded spaces.