The New York Times (NYT) issued a correction Thursday after overstating the number of kids who have been hospitalized in the U.S. with the coronavirus.
The article, originally published Wednesday, discussed COVID-19 cases among children. “Nearly 900,000 children have been hospitalized with Covid-19 since the pandemic began, and about 520 have died,” NYT reporter Apoorva Mandavilli initially wrote.
An updated correction said the original publication “misstated the number of Covid hospitalizations in U.S. children. It is more than 63,000 from August 2020 to October 2021, not 900,000 since the beginning of the pandemic.”
I mean… https://t.co/lgfXFrG1Ni pic.twitter.com/b2dZwj5Fsx
— Karol Markowicz (@karol) October 8, 2021
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirms slightly more than 63,000 kids between the ages of 0-17 have been hospitalized with the virus between Aug. 1 of 2020 and Oct. 5 of 2021. Nearly 500 deaths among children have been attributed to COVID-19, according to data.
CDC data from their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report released in September found that the rate of pediatric hospitalizations for COVID-19 between August of 2020 and August of 2021 accounted for just 0.4% of all COVID-19 deaths. The CDC analyzed data from roughly 260 hospitals and studied 1,790 hospitalized COVID-19 patients under the age of 18. (RELATED: ‘Long COVID-19’ Is Incredibly Rare In Kids, New Data Shows)
The NYT was also forced to correct several other errors, as the publication “incorrectly described actions taken by regulators in Sweden and Denmark. They have halted use of the Moderna vaccine in children; they have not begun offering single doses,” according to the correction.
The article also misstated the timing of a meeting regarding a possible Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine authorization for children.
The Food and Drug Administration is set to meet Oct. 26 to discuss whether Pfizer-BioNTech will be granted Emergency Use Authorization for its vaccine for kids between the ages of 5-11.
