Most US kids have caught the coronavirus, antibody survey finds

Study shows that infections in very young children doubled during the Omicron wave.

Smriti Mallapaty

Nature | May 05, 2022

Credit: Sarah Silbiger/UPI/Shutterstock

Roughly two in every three children aged between one and four years old in the United States have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, according to a nationwide analysis¹. Infections in that age group increased more than in any other during the Omicron wave, which researchers say demonstrates the variant’s high transmissibility.

Researchers looked for COVID-19 antibodies in blood samples from more than 86,000 children under 18 years old — including some 6,100 children aged between one and four. In the youngest children, the number of infections more than doubled, from 33% to 68% between December 2021 and February 2022.

Record malnutrition: Africa’s Sahel region to have over 6 million wasted children in 2022, warn UN agencies

Over 900,000 young lives can be at risk in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal

Madhumita Paul

Down To Earth | April 14, 2022

Around 6.3 million children in the 6-59 months age group will suffer wasting in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal in 2022, a new report warned. 

Over 1.4 million of these children in these six countries in Africa’s Sahel region will suffer severe wasting, United Nations agencies said in the report published March 2022. 

The number of children under five experiencing acute malnutrition will be the highest in 2022 for the region, the paper by West and Central Africa Regional Nutrition Working Group showed. 

Since vaccination of children was completed, no Cuban boy or girl has died

Granma | January 26, 2022

More than 1.6 million children have been vaccinated against COVID-19 in Cuba, and since the conclusion of the campaign, no pediatric deaths have been reported

What COVID vaccines for young kids could mean for the pandemic

Max Kozlov

Nature | October 27, 2021

Modellers predict that vaccinating children against COVID-19 could significantly curtail the spread of any new coronavirus variants of concern.Credit: Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty

Paediatricians and families in the United States are eagerly waiting to see whether the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will authorize a COVID-19 vaccine for the nation’s roughly 28 million 5- to 11-year-olds. Yesterday, an FDA advisory committee reviewed data from a clinical trial testing a low-dose version of the vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech on children in that age group — and voted nearly unanimously to recommend that the FDA grant the shot emergency approval.

Extreme weather events in India made women, children more vulnerable to modern slavery, flags report

Kiran Pandey

Down To Earth | September 21, 2021

Climate change-induced extreme weather events put women, children and minorities at risk of modern slavery and human trafficking. The phenomenon is on the rise in India, among other countries, warned the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and Anti-Slavery International in a recent report. 

Modern slavery — including debt bondage, bonded labour, early / forced marriage and human trafficking — converge with climate change, particularly climate shocks and climate-related forced displacement and migration, the report said.

Kids and COVID: why young immune systems are still on top

Innate immunity might be the key to why children have fared better with the virus. But the Delta variant poses fresh unknowns.

Smriti Mallapaty

Nature | September 07, 2021

After extremely low case rates in New York City early this summer, the number of children testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 has begun to rise. Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty

Early last year, children’s hospitals across New York City had to pivot to deal with a catastrophic COVID-19 outbreak. “We all had to quickly learn — or semi-learn — how to take care of adults,” says Betsy Herold, a paediatric infectious-disease physician who heads a virology laboratory at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The reason: while hospitals across the city were bursting with patients, paediatric wards were relatively quiet. Children were somehow protected from the worst of the disease.

Data collected by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from hospitals across the country suggest that people under the age of 18 have accounted for less than 2% of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 — a total of 3,649 children between March 2020 and late August 2021. Some children do get very sick, and more than 420 have died in the United States, but the majority of those with severe illness have been adults — a trend that has been borne out in many parts of the world.

Capital A Critique of Political Economy

CAPITALIST APPROPRIATION OF WOMEN WORKERS

Karl Marx

Volume I
Book One: The Process of Production of Capital

Chapter Fifteen: Machinery and Modern Industry

Section 3 – The Proximate Effects of Machinery on the Workman

First published: in German in 1867;
Source: First english edition of 1887 (4th German edition changes included as indicated) with some modernisation of spelling;
Publisher: Progress Publishers, Moscow, USSR;
First Published: 1887;
Translated: Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, edited by Frederick Engels;
Online Version: Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1995, 1999;
Transcribed: Zodiac, Hinrich Kuhls, Allan Thurrott, Bill McDorman, Bert Schultz and Martha Gimenez (1995-1996);
HTML Markup: Stephen Baird and Brian Baggins (1999);
Proofed: and corrected by Andy Blunden and Chris Clayton (2008), Mark Harris (2010), Dave Allinson (2015).

The starting-point of modern industry is, as we have shown, the revolution in the instruments of labour, and this revolution attains its most highly developed form in the organised system of machinery in a factory. Before we inquire how human material is incorporated with this objective organism, let us consider some general effects of this revolution on the labourer himself.

A. Appropriation of Supplementary Labour-power by Capital. The Employment of Women and Children

In so far as machinery dispenses with muscular power, it becomes a means of employing labourers of slight muscular strength, and those whose bodily development is incomplete, but whose limbs are all the more supple. The labour of women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for by capitalists who used machinery. That mighty substitute for labour and labourers was forthwith changed into a means for increasing the number of wage-labourers by enrolling, under the direct sway of capital, every member of the workman’s family, without distinction of age or sex. Compulsory work for the capitalist usurped the place, not only of the children’s play, but also of free labour at home within moderate limits for the support of the family. ^[38]

What New COVID Variants Mean for Schools is Not Yet Clear

COVID-19

Dyani Lewis

Nature | January 20, 2021

COVID-19

What New COVID Variants Mean for Schools is Not Yet Clear

Dyani Lewis

Nature | January 20, 2021

Researchers say more testing in children is needed. Credit: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty

The emergence of fast-spreading coronavirus variants has once again put a spotlight on the role of children in the COVID-19 pandemic. Early data on one new variant had suggested that it was spreading more in children than in adults compared with other lineages. But researchers now suggest the variant is spreading more efficiently in all age groups, allaying those fears.

Left to Starve: How COVID-19 is Hitting India’s Children

COVID-19 IN INDIA

Kundan Pandey

Down To Earth | September 16, 2020

Anganwadis in most states have stopped operating since April (Pphotograph: Srikant Chaudhary)

Nearly half of India’s children are already undernourished and the country’s handling of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is expected to push many more to malnutrition.

“Anganwadis have not provided food to children since April, when the centres were either converted into quarantine centres or closed down due to the pandemic,” says Sundari Tirki, general secretary of Anganwadi Karmchari Sabha in Jharkhand.

RESISTING IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION AGAINST VENEZUELA

Protect the Most Vulnerable

 

Manitos Children’s Fund aspires to build a world where not one child dies of malnutrition or lack of access to medical care due to political differences among nations

https://manitoschildrensfund.org/