COVID & Youth: Are We Paying Enough Attention to Younger Members of the Community?
By Noreen Sugrue, Director of Research, Latino Policy Forum
The warmer weather arriving at the same time that cities across the country, including Chicago, open after more than a year shuttered by the pandemic means that summer camps, sporting activities, and even summer school are back and all in person. And what does that mean for younger Latinos not vaccinated or still too young to get it? What it means, for example, is that the situation among those under the age of 20 in the Latino community could potentially become a health, economic, and educational disaster.
A little more than a year ago, public health officials, community advocates, and elected officials were loud and clear voicing concern and even outrage over the high rates of COVID cases, hospitalization, and death among older adults. But now, there is an alarming issue in who is being affected by the virus, and that is found in those under the age of 20. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Latino community.
The Delta variant presents a big problem for the young.
In Illinois, for example, close to 20 percent of all COVID case in the Latino community are under the age of 20, compared to 15 percent for both Blacks and whites. Another way to understand what is happening is to look at these numbers and compare the rates of cases in those under the age of 20 by race/ethnicity. For Latinos it’s 6,428 per 100,000, compared to 4,620 and 5,320 per 100,000 for Blacks and whites, respectively.
In the early part of the epidemic, the data and analysis showed that children were not as affected by COVID as adults, especially, as mentioned above, the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions. Children were largely asymptomatic when they were infected, they seldom became seriously ill, and they appeared to not transmit the virus as easily as adults.
However, the appearance of the Delta variant has reshaped the COVID landscape. This new—and likely soon-to-be-dominant—variant of the coronavirus produces an increased likelihood that children will get sick and be hospitalized.
In Latino children, this situation is compounded by the fact that parents or other adults in the home are likely to be working in high-risk jobs and therefore, even if vaccinated and themselves not sick, possibly bringing the virus home and infecting younger people, many of whom are not yet vaccinated because they or their family haven’t gotten around to it or because they are not yet eligible.
Additionally, the rate of full vaccination among Latinos is still relatively low; in Illinois it is approximately 13 percent. Since one vaccine dose produces a very small amount of protection (about 33 percent effectiveness) against the Delta variant, the rate of full vaccination coverage is the relevant point to consider.
Moreover, the Latino population in the United States skews down in age, meaning a significant portion of that population is young. And the Latino population in Illinois reflects that youth- leaning bias: while Latinos are 17 percent of the state’s population, they represent 25 percent of the state’s population of residents under 20. Looking at the Latino population specifically, more than a third (35 percent) are 20 years old or younger, compared to 21 percent for both whites and Asian American residents, and 26 percent for Black residents of the state.
Coronavirus vaccines were recently approved for younger people ages 12 and up, and healthcare providers and community leaders have been actively lobbying for greater access to those vaccines within the Latino community.
Vaccine developers say they expect results from clinical trials for youngsters five- to 11-years-old and even younger (six months to four-year-olds) to be made public as soon as the fall or by the end of the year at the latest.
That means it is imperative for elected officials, healthcare providers, and community leaders in the public and private sectors to continue to focus on vaccinations and to all together especially call for interventions and actions aimed at mitigating and addressing these increasing rates of COVID among the young. Some healthcare workers have gone door-to-door among the community, others have appeared on Spanish-language media and other outlets to get the message out about the importance of young people getting vaccinated and where to go to get it, and that must continue unabated. As in the early phase of the epidemic, everyone must voice a sense of moral outrage and insist that an increase in coronavirus cases among the young is not an acceptable situation and must be addressed.
Young Latinos, and in fact all young people, deserve the same attention and response that was so readily given to older Americans.