Children Keep Dying of COVID-19, As GOP Claims They’re Immune to It

August 10th 2020

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (US Department of Education)

By Dan Desai Martin

Children across the country are not only testing positive for coronavirus, but many are dying despite repeated claims from top Trump administration officials that kids are virtually immune to the pandemic.

A 7-year-old child became Georgia’s youngest victim of the coronavirus pandemic on Thursday, WSAV, a Savannah-area NBC affiliate, reported. The child had no underlying health conditions, according to a report from the state health department.

On Monday, CNN reported two children in Florida — ages 14 and 17 — died from COVID-19, bringing the state’s death toll for children up to seven. The youngest victim in Florida was a 9-year-old girl from Putnam County.

In the month of July, 28 children died from coronavirus, according to data from 44 states compiled by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Since the pandemic began, 86 children have died.

At the end of July, 338,982 child coronavirus cases had been reported across the country, the group reported, and the two-week period from July 16 to July 30 saw a 40% increase in child cases.

The group also reported that a total of 2,669 children had been hospitalized in the 20 states where data was available.

Despite the data, the Trump administration and other high-profile Republicans have pushed for schools to reopen because children will be safe from the virus.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump lied on “Fox & Friends,” stating, “If you look at children, children are almost, I would almost say definitely, but almost immune from this disease.” In urging schools to reopen, he added that kids “have much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this,” falsely claiming, “They don’t have a problem.”

The statement was so misleading that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube removed the video from their platforms.

Last month, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made a similar false claim.

“More and more studies show that kids are actually stoppers of the disease and they don’t get it and transmit it themselves,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said on July 16, adding, “the default should be getting back to school kids in person, in the classroom.”

At least 20 children across the nation have died since DeVos made this statement.

On July 9, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) attempted to reassure parents that opening schools would be safe, saying, “The good news is if you look again at the numbers, no one under the age of 20 has died of the coronavirus,” in the state. At the time, at least one child had died in Dallas, the Miami Herald reported.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, a total of seven children have died in Texas since the beginning of the crisis.

Some schools have reopened for in-person instruction, and several have already seen coronavirus outbreaks.

An Indiana school was forced to quarantine nearly 50 students on Tuesday after four students tested positive for coronavirus.

A school in Corinth, Mississippi, has already quarantined 116 students less than two weeks after classes resumed after six students and one staff member tested positive, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

In Paulding County, Georgia, a student was suspended earlier this week after posting a photo of a crowded hallway in her school showing very few students wearing masks.

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