Kids’ Covid hospitalizations hit pandemic high, worrying doctors and

Trisha DeGroot’s 10-year-old daughter, Rainey, returned to her Houston home after a church choir practice in September looking unwell.

Rainey was running a fever, so DeGroot had her tested for Covid-19 as a precaution. When the results came back positive, DeGroot assumed Rainey would recover quickly, like her 13-year-old son, Sam, who had caught Covid in February.

Rainey experienced abdominal pain, a bad headache, nausea and vomiting. But after about 10 days, her personality came back and she seemed to be turning the corner, DeGroot said.

Then Rainey’s condition took a turn for the worse. She had trouble eating. The abdominal pain and headaches got worse. But the family doctor couldn’t identify why Rainey was sick. A gastroenterologist told DeGroot that some children’s bodies overreact to Covid. He prescribed a medication called cyproheptadine to ease the stomach pain and help her start eating again. It didn’t work, DeGroot said.

DeGroot, who studies nursing, took her daughter to a clinic at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston that specializes in post-Covid symptoms. Rainey was diagnosed with long Covid and dysautonomia, a failure of the autonomic nervous system, which controls the body’s basic functions, such as digestion.

In December, Rainey became nauseated by the smell of food and said everything tasted like it was rotting, DeGroot said. She took Rainey back to Texas Children’s Hospital, where she was admitted and treated for two weeks.

Rainey was placed on a feeding tube, which is still the only way she can eat. She is now home-schooled, but she has difficulty reading and it’s hard for her to keep up, DeGroot said.

At the time of Rainey’s infection, 10-year-old children weren’t eligible for vaccination. The Food and Drug Administration would authorize the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine for kids ages 5 to 11 in October. DeGroot, her husband, David, and Sam were all vaccinated. Her 4-year-old daughter Helen isn’t eligible yet.

Rainey was infected during the surge caused by the delta variant. The highly contagious omicron variant is now driving the pandemic’s largest wave of infection across the world. As new infections soar, the number of children hospitalized in the U.S. with Covid recently hit a record high.

Infectious disease experts at children’s hospitals in Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver and Washington, D.C., all told CNBC that they are seeing more children hospitalized with Covid than during previous waves — although the number represents a lower percentage of overall cases.

Pediatric infectious disease specialist Dr. Roberta DeBiasi said that at…