ERIE COUNTY, N.Y. — Erie County leaders have stressed that people in their 20s and 30s are driving the new cases of COVID-19 in our area. However, that's not the only group seeing an uptick in cases.
"School-age children's positivity rates have progressively increased over the last few weeks," said Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz on Twitter.
"This past week, you can see that our school-age children, people under this age of 18 have had a significant increase each successive week," said Erie County Health Commissioner Dr. Gale Burstein in a news briefing on Tuesday.
Dr. Burstein stressed this is a serious disease for all age groups and she added that the county is seeing what's considered school-related case reports almost exclusively among students at this point.
"We were expecting for last week a very small number of school-related case reports because the schools weren't obligated to report, [due to spring break]. However, despite that, we still saw a significant number of school reports, actually the second-highest number, where the first highest was the week before," Dr. Burstein said.
County leaders explained school-based cases identify positive individuals within a school, not necessarily that the transmission took place on school grounds.
"There are multiple mechanisms for people to get infected and if they're students in a classroom, if they are infected with COVID-19 and they don't have symptoms, they are in that classroom and potentially transmitting infection to other students," Dr. Burstein said. "So the way we're counting, it doesn't mean that they were definitely infected from the school just because we're counting it as a school-based case. However, we have had instances where we have documented that there has been transmissions in the classroom."
However, Dr. John Sellick, a hospital epidemiologist with Kaleida Health told 2 On Your Side the spike in cases in people under 18, fortunately, doesn't appear to have translated into a spike in hospitalizations among that age group.
"I'm told at Oishi [Children's Hospital] they've not really seen an uptick in hospitalizations which is good," Dr. Sellick said. "We're hopeful with these younger people that they will do well and not have to come to the hospital and not have anything bad happen to them but they are infectious for those 10 days after they first get sick so everybody in the family, everybody among that circle of friends has to be aware of that."
Dr. Sellick stressed once again the importance of following public health measures to limit the spread and being cognizant that there is spread among the under 18 age group as well.
"I think being mindful of it is the most important thing because this is not all happening in the classroom. A lot of it is happening with athletic activities and other social activities," said Dr. Sellick.
