Wearing a medical mask, Catherine Miller, 13, tests out a mattress at Schmitt Furniture in New Albany. The Louisville teen was with her grandmother and mother shopping. May 4, 2020 Indiana Opens Up Shopping May 4 2020
Syndication: Louisville
New York, NY (77WABC)- This is just another reminder that the pandemic is NOT over! Among children, older teens are seeing the highest Covid-19 case rates right now according to a recent CNN study.
As of Saturday, teens ages 16-17 have the highest rate of infections among not only children, but all age groups, based on the CDC’s count of weekly Covid-19 cases (per 100,000 people).
Dr. Georges Benjamin from the American Public Health Association says there are a few factors that would cause the teens to have the highest rate of infections, including the fact that they are the least likely to be vaccinated.
“The simple answer is — you have a virus that’s highly infectious. It’s going to spread to the people who are most vulnerable, and that’s going to be the people who are least likely to be vaccinated,” Benjamin stated to CNN. “And it’s still true that the younger people are still least likely to be vaccinated.”
Additionally, teens are most likely to interact with one another the most aggressively during the summer, even though the Delta Variant is highly transmissible.
About 8 million or 32% of all adolescents ages 12 to 17 are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 so far per CNN. As more teens receive the vaccine, it will still take a while to see the effects.
