A 6-year-old girl has become the youngest person in the state of Florida to die from coronavirus complications according to health officials.
On Friday, the Hillsborough County resident’s death was reported by the Florida Department of Health but no additional information was available that said how she contracted the virus or if she had any pre-existing conditions.
In Florida as of Saturday, over 48,000 children have contracted COVID-19 and almost 600 have been hospitalized and eight have died. Prior to the 6-year-old’s death, a 9-year-old who lived in Putnam County had been the youngest confirmed fatality in the state.
Last week, the CDC issued new guidance regarding the increasing rate of cases in children, as between the months of March and July, both the number and rate of cases among children have been “steadily increasing.”
In a recent report over 97,000 children are reported to have tested positive for the coronavirus in July. The report was published by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. In addition, researchers reported that there was a 40 percent increase in child cases in the last two weeks of July.
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The report also found that of the almost 5 million reported COVID-19 cases in the United States, 338,982 have been children.
Both researchers and health officials are still attempting to understand the effects of the virus on children and the role they play in its spread as schools around the country attempt to reopen schools safely.
In the CDC’s latest guidelines, it cited recent studies that have found children can carry higher levels of the virus than adults, and that the household transmission “was high” for patients between 10 and 19 years of age.
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And while there have been fewer cases in children, the CDC noted how the amount may be impacted by the fact that schools across the nation have been closed for months.
Just last month, Florida surpassed New York to become the state with the second-highest official coronavirus case count, right behind California.
As of this past Monday morning, there have been at least 600,563 confirmed cases and 10,324 deaths, according to a New York Times database.
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