‘Exponential’ increase: More than a quarter million children contracted COVID just last week -- the most ever

COVID-19 infection cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are skyrocketing, due to the delta variant, still large numbers of Americans who refuse to get vaccinated or wear masks, and children going back to school, many with no mask or vaccine mandates.

Well over a quarter-million children contracted COVID-19 just last week, according to a joint report from the Children's Hospital Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics which tracks all cases at the state level. It is the highest number of child coronavirus cases ever reported, ABC News reports.COVID-19 infection cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are skyrocketing, due to the delta variant, still large numbers of Americans who refuse to get vaccinated or wear masks, and children going back to school, many with no mask or vaccine mandates.

Well over a quarter-million children contracted COVID-19 just last week, according to a joint report from the Children's Hospital Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics which tracks all cases at the state level. It is the highest number of child coronavirus cases ever reported, ABC News reports.

"251,781 child COVID-19 cases were reported the past week from 8/26/21-9/2/21" the report states, noting there have now been more than 5 million cases of coronavirus in children. Children represented more than a quarter (26.8%) of all the weekly reported cases, a 10% increase to the total.

"After declining in the early summer, new cases among kids are rising 'exponentially,' the organizations wrote," ABC News adds, "with the weekly figure now standing nearly 300 times higher than it was in June, when just 8,400 pediatric cases were reported over the span of one week."

Those numbers do not account for all child coronavirus cases. They include 49 of 50 states. New York does not break down cases by age. New York City does, as do Puerto Rico, the District of Colombia, and Guam, and all those numbers are included.

The most cases were reported in the South and the West, with the north east having the fewest number.

Texas, the report states, has been under-counting child COVID cases.