13 children, teens hospitalized with COVID-19 this week, B.C. officials say

B.C. health officials have provided new details on the recent uptick in children and teenagers being hospitalized with COVID-19, including that none of the patients have required critical care.

Dr. Bonnie Henry shared the latest hospitalization data during a modelling presentation Friday, revealing 13 patients under the age of 18 were admitted to hospital with COVID-19 from Jan. 6 to 12.

Nine of those were children under the age of five, who are currently ineligible for vaccination. There were also two hospitalizations in the five to 11 age group, and two in the 12 to 17 age group.

Henry noted that officials in B.C. and other jurisdictions are "seeing a different pattern" of illness among young people who catch Omicron, which is now the dominant variant in Canada.

"It behaves more like some of the other respiratory viruses in triggering things like asthma and airway disease and bronchiolitis in young children," she said. "That's most commonly the reason they're in hospital after infection with COVID."

While there were no children admitted to critical care over the last week, and there have been no coronavirus deaths involving B.C. children since April, officials have cautioned that young people can still get seriously ill, and transmit the virus to others.

There were 2,782 cases involving people under the age of 18 from Jan. 6 to 12, including 1,026 involving children under the age of five.

Henry encouraged parents to get their kids vaccinated when eligible, noting that COVID-19 case rates are higher for people who are unvaccinated, whether they are adults or children. The province's data also shows vaccination significantly decreases the likelihood of hospitalization among young people.

"We've only had one case of a child hospitalized who's been vaccinated," Henry said. That child's stay in hospital was short, according to officials.

Since the start of the pandemic, 32 children and teenagers have been admitted to intensive care, including 14 under the age of five.

Officials also stressed the importance of parents and others who spend time around young children getting vaccinated, calling it "the best we can do to protect them from transmission."

The province's modelling presentation indicated that, when adjusted for age, unvaccinated people are 27 times more likely to require intensive care and 40 times more likely to die from COVID-19.