A new model has estimated that nearly 40,000 kids have lost at least one parent to COVID-19 as the US sees an increase in hospitalizations in young people.
O κορονοϊός άφησε ορφανά περισσότερα από 40 000 παιδιά! makthes.gr - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from makthes.gr Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
JAMA Pediatrics, used computer modeling to extrapolate the data and reach this staggering conclusion.
“We’re opening up the newspaper everyday and looking at the growing number of people who have died,” says Rachel Kidman, lead author of the paper and an associate professor in public health at Stony Brook University. “But we’re not thinking about the number of people left behind and that’s a staggering amount.”
Dubbed the “parental bereavement multiplier,” the computer model used underlying census data to estimate the number of orphaned or partially orphaned minors. The researchers developed simulations of kin networks that allowed them to model how many relatives cousins, aunts, uncles, children, parents, and siblings that the average person of a given age and ethnic or racial group has during their life, and thus would leave behind in death.
The true toll of the coronavirus pandemic
The official death toll of the coronavirus pandemic continues to spiral to staggering heights. In the United States, more than 570,000 lives have been lost to the disease. Worldwide, the number exceeds 2,890,000. Daily case and death counts are rising internationally as the continued spread of new and more infectious variants threatens to exceed last year’s fall surge.
Moreover, the actual number of deaths attributed to the disease and its consequences is in reality far higher. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently revealed that the number of “excess deaths” in 2020, those deaths above what was expected based on averages from previous years, exceeded 503,000, 42 percent more than the officially recorded coronavirus deaths.