Chicago Health Commissioner: COVID Hospitalizations for Kids ‘Comparable’ to Flu, Staff Is Safer in School, I Worry about Closures Lasting

On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Don Lemon Tonight,” Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady stated that the amount of children in the city hospitalized with the flu in a typical year is “comparable” to the hospitalization rate among children for COVID, “the risk of COVID was lower for both kids and staff who were in-person, in school with mitigations” earlier in the pandemic, and she worries “that not being able to be back in person could just keep going on here. And we’ve got to, at some level, learn to live with COVID with the appropriate safety mitigations in place.”

Arwady said, “We looked at how many children in a typical year are hospitalized with the flu in Chicago. It’s comparable to what we’re seeing with how many children are hospitalized with COVID. We looked, in addition, at what’s happening to fully vaccinated, especially and boosted adults, that is not who is being hospitalized with COVID or getting seriously ill by and large in the City of Chicago. And, in that setting, we compared that with the data that — where we had our public schools out of school earlier in COVID, and we had the largest private school district right here in Chicago in person, the comparison between those for months, the risk of COVID was lower for both kids and staff who were in-person, in school with mitigations. We know how to do this at this point.”

She continued, “And we just saw such negative consequences, almost 100,000 kids disconnected from learning with the extended remote period, and I’m just worried that not being able to be back in person could just keep going on here. And we’ve got to, at some level, learn to live with COVID with the appropriate safety mitigations in place.”

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