COVID-19 has become the eighth most common cause of death among children in the United States, according to a recent study.
Children are significantly less likely to die from covid than any other age group — less than 1% of all deaths since the start of the pandemic have been among those younger than 18, according to federal data. COVID-19 has been the third leading cause of death in the broader population.
But it’s rare for children to die for any reason, the researchers wrote, so the burden of COVID-19 is best understood in the context of other pediatric deaths.
COVID-19 killed fewer people in the US in 2022, but early data suggests it was still a leading cause of death.
“Pediatric deaths are rare by any measure. It’s something that we don’t expect to happen and it’s a tragedy in a unique way. It’s a really profound event,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases.
“Everyone knows that covid is the most severe in the elderly and immunocompromised and that it’s less severe in children, but that does not mean it’s a benign disease in children. Just because the numbers are so much lower in children doesn’t mean that they’re not impactful.”
In 2019, the last year before the pandemic, the leading causes of death among children and young adults ages 0 to 19 included perinatal conditions, unintentional injuries, congenital malformations or deformations, assault, suicide, malignant neoplasms, diseases of the heart and influenza and pneumonia.
The researchers’ analysis of data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that there were 821 COVID-19 deaths in this age group during a 12-month period from Aug. 2021 to July 2022. That death rate – about 1 for every 100,000 children ages 0 to 19 – ranks eighth compared with the 2019 data. It ranks fifth among adolescents ages 15 to 19.
COVID-19 deaths displace influenza and pneumonia, becoming the top cause of death caused by any infectious or respiratory disease. It caused “substantially” more deaths than any vaccine-preventable disease historically, the researchers wrote.
