Over 12.9 mln children in U.S. infected with COVID-19

LOS ANGELES, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Over 12.9 million children in the United States have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic, according to the latest report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children's Hospital Association.

Almost 116,000 of these cases have been added in the past 4 weeks. Since the first week of last September, there have been almost 7.9 million additional child COVID-19 cases in the country, according to the report published late Monday.

Children represented 19 percent of all COVID-19 cases in the United States, the report showed.

Over 33,000 child COVID-19 cases were reported in the week ending April 14.

There is an urgent need to collect more age-specific data to assess the severity of illness related to new variants as well as potential longer-term effects, said the AAP.

"It is important to recognize there are immediate effects of the pandemic on children's health, but importantly we need to identify and address the long-lasting impacts on the physical, mental, and social well-being of this generation of children and youth," said the AAP.