MACON, Ga. — Healthcare professionals nationwide are watching as the number of children admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 rises.
We talked with a pediatric doctor at Atrium Health Navicent to see what children are going through right now in Central Georgia.
Doctors are hoping the new CDC ruling authorizing boosters for children ages 12 to 15 will help slow the increase in hospitalizations.
Katie Lee had COVID-19, but beat it.
"It was a very miserable experience," Lee said.
She was fighting the virus when she was pregnant with her fourth child, but now, Lee is healthy and enjoying motherhood, trying every day to keep her youngest daughter and her other 3 children away from COVID-19.
Lee said, "Not just the coronavirus, but just any virus -- it's scary to me."
According to the Georgia Department of Public Health, Georgia's pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations, including infants, spiked January 1. Atrium Health Navicent's spokesperson Amy Lee Womack did not provide specific COVID-19 pediatric cases or hospitalization numbers, but pediatrician Doctor Edward Clark says they are seeing an increase.
"It's not at the level we saw back in August, so, you know we had a big surge in August. It kind of quieted down, and now we're on a rise, so we are seeing another surge. Sort of notice we are always two or three weeks behind, so we've sort of got our fingers crossed that it won't get out of hand here in Central Georgia," Clark said.
Lee said, "I am very careful about taking her out too often; and she's so little, I don't want anything to happen to her."
The numbers of children hospitalized with COVID-19 are still small compared to older age groups, but according to the CDC, five million children ages 12 to 15 in the United States are eligible for their first Pfizer booster shot.
Clark also said Beverly Knight Olson Children's Hospital's symptomatic admitted cases include teenagers as well.