Illinois sees uptick in youth COVID-19 cases, school outbreaks heading into Thanksgiving break

Chicago Tribune - 11/17/2021

An uptick in youth COVID-19 cases in Illinois in recent weeks is fueling school outbreaks and student quarantines, just days before the start of the Thanksgiving holiday break.

In the past two weeks, the average number of youth cases reported, ages 0-17, has risen from 628 a day to 1,020 a day, which equates to a 62% increase, based on a 7-day average, according to a Tribune analysis of state health department data.

All age groups are seeing major jumps, with a 57% rise in cases for those ages 0-4, a 59% rise for those ages 5-11, and 71% rise for 12-17.

As schools approach Thanksgiving break, the recent spike in cases is approaching the peak level of the fall 2021 surge for youth cases, which was an average of 1,228 a day, recorded on Sept. 4, in the early weeks of kids returning to classes.

But the recent figure, accurate through Tuesday, remains notably lower than the pandemic’s highest average daily tally of new youth cases —1,532 — which was reported exactly a year earlier, on Nov. 16, 2020.

According to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association, for the week ending Nov. 11, there was a 22% increase in children’s COVID-19 cases nationwide compared with two weeks ago.

While elementary school-based vaccine clinics were launched in Chicago and the suburbs last week following the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorization of the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, public health officials in Illinois expressed concerns Tuesday that cases among children are heading in the wrong direction.

The Illinois Department of Public Health last week reported 148 youth outbreaks statewide, 124 of which were at public and private schools enrolling students in kindergarten through 12th grade, according to the IDPH website.

At Willow Bend Elementary School in Rolling Meadows, a recent outbreak involving 40 cases prompted officials with Community Consolidated School District 15 to ask parents to immediately pick up their children, and temporarily close the school building.

The school’s roughly 600 students in kindergarten through 6th grade and staff were required to switch back to remote learning Nov. 8, according to District 15 spokesperson Rebecca Latham.

“While we know this will pose challenges for many of our families, we hope you will understand that we must place the health and well-being of our students and staff above our desire to remain open for in-person learning,” Willow Bend Principal Robert Harris said in a letter to parents.

Students and staff are expected to return to Willow Bend in person after Thanksgiving Break on Nov. 29, Harris said.

With Chicago Public Schools reporting 2,400 student and 679 adult cases this school year through Monday, CEO Pedro Martinez said Tuesday that the school system is seeing case numbers starting to rise.

“We saw just over 250 cases last week. That’s for the full week,” Martinez said at a Tuesday news conference. “We saw an uptick from about 160 the week before, so we’re still very low, but of course my concern is that we have the holidays coming. We have the winter coming.”

Public health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said very few Chicago children are being hospitalized with COVID-19, and the in-school transmission rate appears to be “very low.” Arwady said her team has identified 33 instances in CPS where in-school transmission couldn’t be ruled out since full-time, in-person learning began in late August.

But Arwady said unvaccinated 12- to 17-year-olds are fueling a citywide increase in COVID-19 cases.

“It really is these unvaccinated teenagers that are right now a big part of what’s driving this increase and remains a real focus for the department and for all of the schools in Chicago,” Arwady said at Tuesday’s news conference.

“In the last 30 days, one in four Chicago COVID cases have been in children under age 18, whereas over the whole pandemic, it’s been about half that, one in eight. Some of this is because there’s more testing happening, of course, in schools that we’ve talked about, but this is also just a reflection that many children are only now getting the opportunity to be vaccinated.”

CPS gave students the day off Friday to get vaccinated. Martinez said 6,687 CPS students were inoculated Friday. Of those students, 5,849 were children 5 to 11 years old. Nearly 13,000 CPS students got vaccinated from Thursday through Saturday, with 11,434 students 5 to 11 years old. Arwady said the Friday vaccine push “went beautifully” with a few vaccination records broken.

The expanded eligibility for the shots is arriving as IDPH continues to receive outbreak information from local health departments through a reporting system that confirms if clusters of cases are linked by location and time.

Outbreaks included on the IDPH roster are those that have been identified by a local health department to have three or more COVID-19 cases involving people who may have a shared exposure at a location, and are from different households.

More than 6.6 million children in the U.S. have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic, according to the Children and COVID-19: State Data Report, which compiles state-by-state data on COVID-19 cases in children.

Child cases nationwide have declined since a peak of 252,000 the week of Sept. 2, but COVID-19 cases among children “remain extremely high,” according to officials with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

kcullotta@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kcullotta