for kids. correct. wow. what about if there s not masking in a school environment, still you argue it better to keep the schools, the schools are still safer. yeah, i think it s a little more of a closer call there because you re going to have more transmission. we have an ongoing study of 60 school districts, 1.3 million children nationally involved in that study, and masking reduces transmission by about 80%. so you re going to have more cases and more transmission in these unmasked districts but there, you re making the argument that we should punish children for the failure of adults to uptake a free, safe and effective vaccine. and for the children who are in those schools, the parents who are worried about their children in those schools, if they will vaccinate their children, they make it so that covid is less of a threat to their children than influenza in a typical influenza year. dr. danny benjamin, i really appreciate it. thank you, fascinating. absolutely. thank
new complication for schools as students return to the classroom after the holiday break. here s nbc s stephanie gosk with more. reporter: across the country the vast majority of students are back in in-person classes but new numbers from the american academy of pediatrics show just how fast covid case numbers are rising among children. in the week leading up to christmas, pediatric covid cases reached nearly 200,000, but troubling new numbers from the american academy of pediatrics show an even more dramatic statistic. the very next week a 60% jump in cases of children getting covid, more than 300,000. i simply have never seen anything like what we re experiencing now. reporter: according to an nbc tally, the case numbers are leading to record hospitalizations of children with covid in nine different states, and while some of those children are being treated for other conditions when they test positive, doctors say a significant number are getting serious cases of covid. covid
across the world are seeing rises in cases was up here in the united states our team have been working around the clock during the holiday weeks for them in the last two weeks weeks for them in the last two weeks we have developed hundreds of military. we deployed hundreds of military. we deployed hundreds of military doctors and nurses to stop the hospitals in our states that are overrun and overworked because of unvaccinated covid 19 patients primarily. federal emergency emergency management association, fema is also working in our direction. working at hospital capacity. including whether they be beds. i directed fema to be ready to provide emergency hospital beds wherever and whenever they are needed. the federal government will be there. we ve shipped nearly 2.4 million pieces of protective equipment to hospitals from bounds to gloves. and where doing now whatever we can to protect communities from the surge of
that have to report positive tests are way behind because of the holidays, and so those case numbers are artificially low inherently. we have well more than a million cases, but what we really need to look at and the sort of weak link in the system at the moment as your reporters have pointed out, is the health care system. we look at hospitalizations, hospitalizations where people are requiring oxygen for covid, that s a much more important measure, and again, as your reporters have pointed out, 3/4 or more of the patients in the hospital with covid are patients who are unvaccinated. and as you get sicker and sicker in the hospital into the intensive care unit, into the intensive care unit with a breathing tube, you know, more and more of those patients are the unvaccinated. and that s really what we have to look at. we just got a three-minute warning to the president. i want to get through a couple more questions with you as quickly as we can. testing, a lot of people are relying o
reporter: and the other two with the army national guard. all three have medical training. doing okay? i think so. reporter: national guard member, justin lightner is working with one of the hospital s registered nurses. they re taking care of lows murray, who just got transferred out of the intensive care unit. there we go. all good. we decided to join the national guard after seeing what happened on 9/11 in kindergarten? i just wanted to help my community. grrks they have their work cut out for them because about 400 employees at the hospital are out of work because they have covid. air national guard captain is the officer in charge at the medical center, which consists of guard members who do nonmedical tasks. are you concerned any of your