Hospitals report increase in pediatric COVID-19 cases

Mom of immune-compromised child urges boosters

Jennifer Holton reports

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - BayCare hospitals in the Tampa Bay Area are currently reporting 18 COVID-19 pediatric patients.

In Pinellas County, Johns Hopkins All Childrens says, in the week ending January 2, they had 38 kids test positive for COVID, compared to four in the previous week.

"We will see an increase in kids entering the hospital with just the sheer number of kids who get it," said pediatric physician Dr. Juan Dumois.

The rising number in cases comes as the CDC announced new guidelines for immunocompromised children.

"They’ve made an allowance for children 5 to 11 getting a booster of the vaccine if they have an underlying weakness of the immune system," Dumois said.

Hillsborough County resident Landen Sapien falls into that category. He has been battling ALL leukemia T-Cell for two years. The 9-year-old is vaccinated, but it was one week after his second dose when a pre-chemotherapy COVID test came back positive.

"So he missed his spinal tap and changed his medications. It was very frustrating," his mother Amy said.

For the last 26 days, Amy says, he’s been battling COVID alongside cancer.

"It messed up his chemo treatment and he was sort of asymptomatic, or like it was allergies for the first week, and then it developed into COVID pneumonia," she continued.

Landen is one of many pediatric patients as hospitals are seeing an uptick in nationally. And although every state is tracking their pediatric COVID cases in their own way, most hospitals are now testing all children for the virus.

Landen caught COVID despite the vaccine, but Dr. Dumois says he likely still benefitted from it.

"In the case of a patient with leukemia, who’s on chemo, who develops COVID and is not in the hospital? That would suggest to me that they did get some benefit from the vaccine," Dumois said.

Landen’s mother says she supports the booster, but is going to wait on it for now.

"He’s sick, so obviously I’m not going to get it for him now, we will probably test for antibodies, because having leukemia, he has a 30-percent chance of the vaccination not sticking," she said.

Dr. Dumois other parents of healthy children should ask their doctor if they have any questions about the vaccination and booster for their kids.

That new guidance that came down from the CDC was two-fold – it also said people who received the Pfizer vaccine should get their booster five months after their second shot, instead of six months.

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