As delta rises, so do COVID-19 cases in Illinois kids. They’re starting to make up more of the hospitalizations.

The number of Illinois children infected with COVID-19 continues to rise, and state data shows younger children not eligible for a vaccine are a growing – but still small – percentage of those hospitalized.

New data released by the Illinois Department of Public Health on Friday saw 1,678 cases in children 5 to 11 years old for the week ending Aug. 6. Since the week ending June 26, COVID-19 cases among children ages 5-11 have increased 1,453% and the raw total of cases is back up at a level unseen since the end of January.

For the past four months of available state data, as the delta variant has taken an increasingly stronger hold of overall COVID-19 cases, the percentage of children hospitalized in Illinois among all hospitalizations has increased.

Hospitalizations among children, especially in the younger group not yet eligible for a vaccine, remain low. The overwhelming majority of children who are infected with COVID-19 do not require hospitalization.

But even when cases spiked during the fall surge, young children still made up less than a half-percent of total coronavirus-related hospitalizations. That percentage has tripled since then, and the raw total of hospital admissions for young kids was higher in July 2021 than August 2020 – before anyone was vaccinated.

It’s all part of what makes the delta variant probably more dangerous than the original version of COVID-19, said Dr. Emily Landon, head of the University of Chicago’s infectious disease prevention and control program.

“There’s more kids being admitted,” Landon said. “I wouldn’t call it, ‘Oh, my God, it’s so much more deadly for children.’ It’s probably more dangerous for children. There are more kids getting sick. Partially it’s a function that it’s more transmissible, but it’s also the only population that is universally unvaccinated.”

A few things make the delta variant a bigger problem than the original virus, public health experts said.

The virus is able to replicate faster, and it’s much better at binding to our cells. That makes it able to get into our bodies faster, Landon said.

Because of those changes, some of our antibodies that try to take out the spike protein in the virus don’t fit as well.

“It’s like that childhood toy. You can’t fit the star into the square hole,” Landon said.

IDPH spokesperson Melaney Arnold said that while the delta variant is more transmissible, there isn’t enough information to say whether it is more virulent.

“It is too early to tell how delta impacts different age groups,” Arnold said. “COVID-19 is a novel virus that continues to be studied, and the emerging variants are even younger.”

Schools and what to learn from the southern surge

Statewide, Gov. JB Pritzker in early August imposed a mask mandate for all schools. The mandate has been met with resistance in the form of protests inside and outside of school board meetings. One school lost its recognition status for defying the mask mandate before reversing its decision, and the Illinois State Board of Education has threatened penalties including losing the ability to participate in sports for schools that choose to defy the mandate.

Landon said that at this point, with such a high number of cases and transmission, everyone needs to be wearing masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status, including in schools.

“If you’re against wearing masks in schools, then you can keep your kid home this year and let them not wear a mask at home,” Landon said.

Nationally, almost 1,600 kids with COVID-19 were hospitalized last week. That was a new seven-day record, according to CDC data.

The southern portion of the country has been hit especially hard by the delta variant. Earlier this week, Arkansas was down to eight total ICU beds. Mississippi’s hospitals are so overrun they are facing failure in “within the next five to seven to 10 days,” according to the state’s COVID-19 clinical response leader at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. More than 4,000 Mississippi K-12 students needed to quarantine within the first days of school opening. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott this week requested 2,500 out-of-state nurses to help deal with his state’s ongoing virus surge.

None of those states had a mask mandate in place.

Meanwhile, parents of children who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated are monitoring COVID-19 vaccine information, with 4 in 10 parents of children younger than 12 saying that once a vaccine is authorized for their child’s age group they will “wait a while to see how it is working” before getting their child vaccinated, according to a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“Vaccination has been very slow in teenagers [compared with] middle-aged adults,” Landon said. “People have assumed that kids are fine. The problem is kids are fine to the same degree everyone else is fine.”

Arnold said the IDPH would continue with its message on the importance of those who are eligible to get vaccinated to get the shot.

“We will continue to encourage everyone who is eligible to be vaccinated to get vaccinated to not only protect themselves, but to also protect those who are too young to be vaccinated and those who do not have a robust response to the vaccine (immunocompromised and older adults),” Arnold said.

Landon said her biggest takeaway from the southern surge in delta was that vaccination is essential, and if you can’t get vaccinated, masking is necessary.

But there was good news for more vaccinated communities, Landon said.

“More vaccinated communities are going to have less hospitalizations and their health care systems are going to be more able to help people that need care,” she said. “We’re seeing elective surgeries get canceled in the south. If you needed that lump removed from your breast, that’s an elective surgery. Up by Chicago, we’re probably not going to have that.”