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Readies for a fourth coronavirus wave, already, its e.r. is seeing a spike in kids suffering mild symptoms. their parents seeking testing, bogging down triage for the seriously ill. we re seeing a lot of patients present with mild respiratory symptoms, cough, convention, fever. known covid exposures, et cetera, and i think a lot of them are seeking testing. reporter: like previous waves, the sickest kids, those needing hospitalization, are having a tough time breathing. they re getting lot of respiratory symptoms, as we ve been expecting. pneu pneumonias, needing respiratory support to help them breathe better. reporter: viral spread expected to intensify in the weeks ahead. and even if the omicron variant isn t as severe, the problem is even if the percent, percent hospitalization rate is lower, ....
Co-director of the center for vaccine development. dr. hotez, you saw miguel s piece from texas children s with those heartbreaking stories from your colleagues about patients there. how are hospital staff dealing with this wave that s hitting kids so especially hard? yeah, well, we got a hint of it over the summer with delta, which was more transmissible than previous lineages but this is by far, the king of transmissible covid viruses. so we re seeing unprecedented nu numbers of kids getting infected and going into children s hospitals. i don t think this virus is selectively targeting children. what s happening is we re seeing unfold across the country a virus firestorm, a virus blizzard and so many kids are getting swept up in it. what we tend to see are they come in two flavors. kids admitted for other reasons who are found on routine testing upon admission to be positive. but also kids who are getting sick from covid. ....
Brothers and sisters and they re not vaccinating them either. so we ve got this kind of spiraling situation so we need to step up our vaccine advocacy for little kids. too much of a narrative out there that says kids do really fine with this. don t worry about it. and we haven t even spoken jake about the long covid symptoms that we re seeing in kids. so a hospital in the uk has done an impressive study to show roughly 1 in 7 kids in london are growing up to develop long covid symptoms. we don t know what that means for their neurodevelopment. we re seeing gray matter brain degeneration, cognitive declines. we don t know if that s going to be a situation in kids. this can haunt us for a long time and the u.s. needs to advocate better but bring up this situation and doing some neurodevelopmental testing in these kids before and after their covid. health experts keep saying with better ventilation, ....
The next few weeks are going to hold? i think the bar for resilience just keeps moving. you think that i don t know how we can do this again and then we keep doing it again. as texas children s readies for a fourth coronavirus wave. already its er is seeing a spike in kids suffering mild symptoms. their parents seeking testing, bogging down triage for the seriously ill. we re seeing a lot of patients present with mild respiratory symptoms, cough, congestion, fever, known covid exposures that a lot of them are really seeking testing. like previous waves, the sickest kids, those needing hospitalization, are having a tough time breathing. so they re getting a lot of respiratory symptoms as we ve been expecting. pneumonia, needing respiratory support to help them breathe better. reporter: viral spread expected to intensify in the weeks ahead and even if the ....
Exposures, et cetera, that are a a lot of them are seeking testing. reporter: like previous waves, the sickest kids, those needing hospitalization, are having a tough time breathing. they re getting a lot of respiratory symptoms as we have been expecting. pneumonia, needing respiratory support to help them breathe better. reporter: viral spread expected to intensify in the weeks ahead, and even if the omicron variant isn t as severe the problem is that with so many children and adults infected, even if the percent of the percent hospitalization rate is lower, we re still we could see more children hospitalized over a very short period of time. that puts a strain on our healthcare resources. reporter: miguel marquez, cnn, houston, texas. so difficult to watch those children and families struggling. joining us now to discuss this is dr. richard besser, a former acting director of the cdc, also ....