Changing Age Distribution of the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, May–August 2020

Boehmer, Tegan K.; DeVies, Jourdan; Caruso, Elise; Santen, Katharina L. van; Tang, Shichao; Black, Carla L.; Hartnett, Kathleen P.; Kite-Powell, Aaron; Dietz, Stephanie; Lozier, Matthew; Gundlapalli, Adi V.

doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm6939e1

Cited by 303 publications

(303 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Recent evidence that monthly COVID-19 incidence increased approximately threefold among persons aged 0-19 years since May and was highest § § § https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/ indicators.html. among young adults aged 20-29 years during July, suggests that young persons might be playing an increasingly important role in community transmission (5,6). The percentage of positive test results in school-aged children also varied within and across HHS regions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 Trends Among School-Aged Children — United States, March 1–September 19, 2020

Leeb¹,

Price²,

Sliwa³

et al. 2020

MMWR Morb. Mortal. Wkly. Rep.

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174

135

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On September 28, 2020, this report was posted as an MMWR Early Release on the MMWR website (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr). Approximately 56 million school-aged children (aged 5-17 years) resumed education in the United States in fall 2020.* Analysis of demographic characteristics, underlying conditions, clinical outcomes, and trends in weekly coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) incidence during March 1-September 19, 2020 among 277,285 laboratory-confirmed cases in school-aged children in the United States might inform decisions about in-person learning and the timing and scaling of community mitigation measures. During May-September 2020, average weekly incidence (cases per 100,000 children) among adolescents aged 12-17 years (37.4) was approximately twice that of children aged 5-11 years (19.0). In addition, among school-aged children, COVID-19 indicators peaked during July 2020: weekly percentage of positive SARS-CoV-2 test results increased from 10% on May 31 to 14% on July 5; SARS-CoV-2 test volume increased from 100,081 tests on May 31 to 322,227 on July 12, and COVID-19 incidence increased from 13.8 per 100,000 on May 31 to 37.9 on July 19. During July and August, test volume and incidence decreased then plateaued; incidence decreased further during early September and might be increasing. Percentage of positive test results decreased during August and plateaued during September. Underlying conditions were more common among school-aged children with severe outcomes related to COVID-19: among school-aged children who were hospitalized, admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU), or who died, 16%, 27%, and 28%, respectively, had at least one underlying medical condition. Schools and communities can implement multiple, concurrent mitigation strategies and tailor communications to promote mitigation strategies to prevent COVID-19 spread. These results can provide a baseline for monitoring trends and evaluating mitigation strategies. School-aged children were stratified by age into two groups: children aged 5-11 years and adolescents aged 12-17 years. Confirmed COVID-19 cases were identified from individuallevel case reports submitted by state health departments for the weeks beginning March 1-September 13, 2020. † Confirmed cases had a positive real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test result for SARS-CoV-2, the virus * https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 Trends Among School-Aged Children — United States, March 1–September 19, 2020

Leeb¹,

Price²,

Sliwa³

et al. 2020

MMWR Morb. Mortal. Wkly. Rep.

Self Cite

174

135

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…These findings suggest that lower engagement in social mitigation behaviors among younger adults might be one possible reason for the increased incidence of confirmed COVID-19 cases in this group, which began in June 2020 and preceded increases among persons aged ≥60 years by 4-15 days (4). Better understanding of barriers and motivators associated with participation in mitigation behaviors is needed to effectively employ strategies that promote engagement of younger adults and others who are not currently engaging in mitigation behaviors.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…CDC recommends multiple, concurrent mitigation behaviors to most effectively reduce the spread of COVID-19 (6). Fewer reported mitigation behaviors among young adults might contribute to the high incidence of confirmed COVID-19 cases in this age group (4). Older adults might be more concerned about COVID-19, based on their higher risk for severe illness compared with that of younger adults (7).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 Mitigation Behaviors by Age Group — United States, April–June 2020

Hutchins¹,

Wolff²,

Leeb³

et al. 2020

MMWR Morb. Mortal. Wkly. Rep.

157

143

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“…We have observed significant variation in the distribution of cases, hospitalization, and deaths by age throughout the pandemic. Notably, during the early stages of the pandemic, older adults were most affected but the age distribution has changed as the pandemic has progressed [29].Given the demographic granularity of EpiCast, we stratified the total cases, hospitalizations, and ICU beds by age This article is a US Government work. It is not subject to copyright under 17 USC 105 and is also made available (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.…”

Section: Impacts By Agementioning

confidence: 99%

Using an Agent-Based Model to Assess K-12 School Reopenings Under Different COVID-19 Spread Scenarios – United States, School Year 2020/21

Germann

Smith

Dauelsberg

et al. 2020

Preprint

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School-age children play a key role in the spread of airborne viruses like influenza due to the prolonged and close contacts they have in school settings. As a result, school closures and other non-pharmaceutical interventions were recommended as the first line of defense in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Assessing school reopening scenarios is a priority for states, administrators, parents, and children in order to balance educational disparities and negative population impacts of COVID-19. To address this challenge, we used an agent-based model that simulates communities across the United States including daycares, primary, and secondary schools to quantify the relative health outcomes of reopening schools. We explored different reopening scenarios including remote learning, in-person school, and several hybrid options that stratify the student population into cohorts (i.e., split cohort) in order to reduce exposure and disease spread. In addition, we assessed the combined impact of reduced in-person attendance in workplaces (e.g., through differing degrees of reliance on telework and/or temporary workplace closings) and school reopening scenarios to quantify the potential impact of additional transmission pathways contributing to COVID-19 spread. Scenarios where split cohorts of students return to school in non-overlapping formats resulted in significant decreases in the clinical attack rate (i.e., the percentage of symptomatic individuals), potentially by as much as 75% . These split cohort scenarios have impacts which are only modestly lesser than the most impactful 100% distance learning scenario. Split cohort scenarios can also significantly avert the number of cases--approximately 60M and 28M--depending on the scenario, at the national scale over the simulated eight-month period. We found the results of our simulations to be highly dependent on the number of workplaces assumed to be open for in-person business, as well as the initial level of COVID-19 incidence within the simulated community. Our results show that reducing the number of students attending school leads to better health outcomes, and the split cohort option enables part-time in-classroom education while substantially reducing risk. The results of this study can support decisions regarding optimal school reopening strategies that at the population level balance education and the negative health outcomes of COVID-19.

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Changing Age Distribution of the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, May–August 2020

Cited by 303 publications

References 7 publications

COVID-19 Trends Among School-Aged Children — United States, March 1–September 19, 2020

COVID-19 Trends Among School-Aged Children — United States, March 1–September 19, 2020

COVID-19 Mitigation Behaviors by Age Group — United States, April–June 2020

Using an Agent-Based Model to Assess K-12 School Reopenings Under Different COVID-19 Spread Scenarios – United States, School Year 2020/21

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