best option. but classes online often in isolation have created their own health concerns. this has resulted in frustrated students, struggling parents, millions of whom cannot afford or access high speed internet or childcare, and teachers, working to save a generation of young minds while too often fearing for their own lives. and their health and that of their loved ones. tonight we will try to explore every part of the educational crisis this pandemic created. but let s start with an obvious admission. there are no simple answers here. there is no one size fits all, inexpensive solution that would end the struggle like that. if this were easy, it would have been solved long ago. so let us listen and learn and try to figure out what to do. so here s a snap shot of where things stand. the families of more than 50 million kids rely on public schools in some 14,000 school districts. so let s bring in our chief medical corn, dr. sanjay gupta. let s start with the most basic qu
to end up in the hospital and people may be unvaccinated because they have been unable to get vaccinated because of their age or because they re immune compromised and don t have as effective a vaccination. it is a concern. it is a decision matrix countries all over the world will be entering over the next several weeks. one of the big concerns we had with kids and covid has been this multiinflammatory syndrome or misc. what has that been displaying during omicron? well, i think like we have talked about with severe illness and omicron there has been what we call a decoupling. so not as high a percentage likelihood of people getting sick with this virus as with previous strains and that s true with children as well. so if you look, we can show sort of the trend lines between cases in kids and the misc in kids and, first of all, it is worth pointing out that over 4 million children have been diagnosed with covid in this country. the blue line is misc, a smaller
scale and cases is the sort of check line, there has been a significant spike in covid cases over the last month in kids. and misc, blue again, is still low, but that typically tends to lag behind by a few weeks. so i think unquestionably we re going to see more children with this multiinflammatory syndrome over the next several weeks, but, again, percentage-wise it will be lower than what we have seen in the past. sanjay, i want to ask you about something that i know is deeply personal. dr. paul farmer, a physician, anthropologist, humanitarian, angel who gained global acclaim for his work delivering healthcare to some of the world s poorest people, he passed away. i want to show people a video to remind them of who he is. proof that it was the right thing to do. please observe a rainbow that just appeared over your left shoulder, clearly a sign from god. somebody is listening. from harvard to haiti to heaven. i m probably not headed to
who are admitted to the hospital, the e.r., for something like a broken bone and then tested and had a positive covid-19 test, even if not experiencing symptoms or dealing with something like a post-covid illness, multiinflammatory syndrome in children, we know can happen four to six weeks after a child has covid-19, but speaking with doctors here in new york city, they tell us when it comes to that first category of children who are being admitted with acute covid-19 are there because of covid-19, that they have seen those numbers increase dramatically in recent days, in recent weeks and they believe it is tied to the omicron variant. one doctor told us noticing in adolescents in an age eligible to be vaccinated but were not, saw them particularly if they had other comorbidities or dealing with obesity. saw them exhibiting symptoms similar to what they re seeing in adults.
it s important for parents to know that covid-19 in children is a vaccine preventable illness so when kids get in the hospital and not only are at risk of dying, they are at risk of this multiinflammatory syndrome, there have been 2,500 kids documented in that age group 5-11. we re not just preventing death. we re preventing that massive systemic icu type condition. parents need to understand that if their kid has co-morbidity at high-risk, the answer is yes. if they have had covid there is no need and for everyone else it s a personal decision. they have got to look at the risks and benefits. it s not a hundred percent safe or a hundred percent risky, some say it s a little small, they want to see more data. john: you need the data quickly. there is a recent survey on parental concerns conducted by harvard northeastern, northwestern and rutgers which found that the big concerns of