As COVID-19 hospitalizations surge across the nation, at least nine states are reporting record pediatric hospitalizations, NBC News reported Jan. 3.
NBC News found record pediatric hospitalizations have been reported in Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maine, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C..
Some pediatric patients tested positive after being hospitalized for unrelated issues, but many have been hospitalized specifically because of complications from COVID-19.
Physicians say the "vast majority" of hospitalized children are unvaccinated, either because they are too young to be eligible for the vaccine or their parents declined to get them vaccinated.
"I think a lot of parents have been relying on the narrative that if you have a healthy child, it’s very unlikely that your child can get sick from COVID," Amy Edwards, MD, a pediatric infectious disease expert at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, told NBC News. "That’s not true."