Sep. 3—School-age kids made up almost a quarter of the new COVID-19 cases across Oklahoma last week, according to data from the state Health Department.

Just since the first week of August, Oklahoma is seeing children make up a larger share of the state’s COVID-19 cases, deputy health commissioner Keith Reed said at a media briefing Thursday. During that week, school-age children made up about 13% of new cases.

During the week of Aug. 22, over 4,700 COVID-19 cases were recorded in the 5 to 11 and 12 to 17 age groups during the week of Aug. 22, the latest weekly epidemiology report from the Health Department shows.

That’s about 24% of the 19,645 cases reported that week. Oklahoma also recorded 15 new hospitalizations among children ages 5 to 17.

The state also recorded 795 COVID-19 cases in children age 4 and younger. There were six hospitalizations in that age group.

“It absolutely concerns us. There’s no question about that,” Health Commissioner Dr. Lance Frye said Thursday when asked about how COVID-19 is affecting children in the state. “We monitor cases in all age groups, and any increase in any age group is something we are concerned about and follow closely.”

Dr. Gitanjali Pai, the state’s chief medical officer, said while children generally have less severe cases of COVID-19 compared with adults, they are still vulnerable to getting infected.

“Overall, so far, the majority of children who have been infected have had asymptomatic or mild disease,” she said. “However, we do know that certain groups of children, for example, those who are under a year of age, or those who may have had underlying conditions could be at increased risk for more serious disease if they are infected.”

What schools are doing

Schools have already been hit hard by COVID-19 in just a few weeks. Some have pivoted to online classes in response to a wave of cases. In others, large numbers of students are being quarantined.

In Edmond, for example, the superintendent wrote in a letter to families that by day 13 of the school year, the district had “more positive Covid cases than at any time during” the previous school year.

“Entire classrooms have been quarantined; parents are missing work; teachers are teaching both in-person students and quarantined students,” Superintendent Angela Grunewald wrote in the letter.

The district will implement a mask requirement for students (with an option for parents to opt their children out) beginning Wednesday of next week after seeing how the virus “has raced through different classrooms and grade levels,” Grunewald announced Thursday.

The district also shared pleas from a dozen local doctors about mask-wearing in schools.

A testament to mask mandates

One pediatrician, Dr. Timothy Krous, said his clinic has seen an “explosion” of COVID-19 cases in children since the school year began.

“It is very clear that masking of all people, kids and adults, is very effective at preventing the spread of COVID and other diseases,” Krous said in a statement. “We have seen this in real time watching kids in school last year compared to this year.

Last year, he said, even at the peak of the pandemic there was “virtually no spread student-to-student in the classroom,” which he said was a testament to masking.

Health experts, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have called for universal masking in schools, especially since children under 12 cannot yet be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Staff writer Nuria Martinez-Keel contributed to this report.