
COVID-19
Fifth graders wearing face masks sit an appropriate social distance during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, NY on May 18, 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic that shut down classrooms classroom has delayed learning in some U.S. school systems by more than a year, with children in high-poverty areas hit hardest, according to data shared with The Associated Press.
Marie Altaffer/AP
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Marie Altaffer/AP

Fifth graders wearing face masks sit an appropriate social distance during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, NY on May 18, 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic that shut down classrooms classroom has delayed learning in some U.S. school systems by more than a year, with children in high-poverty areas hit hardest, according to data shared with The Associated Press.
Marie Altaffer/AP
COVID-19 was the eighth leading cause of death among children in recent months, according to a study published on Monday.
In a one-year period from August 2021 to July 2022, 821 children aged 0-19 died from COVID-19 at a rate of 1 in 100,000. Child deaths of all kinds are rare, the researchers noted.
COVID-19 ranked fifth in deaths not related to the disease and the first in deaths from infectious or respiratory disease, surpassing influenza and pneumonia.

Before the pandemic, in 2019, the leading causes of death among children were perinatal conditions, unintentional injuries, birth defects, assault, suicide, cancerous tumors, heart disease, and influenza and pneumonia.
The period analyzed by the researchers coincided with the rise in Delta and Omicron COVID-19 cases. They found that studying other 12-month periods during the pandemic did not change the results.
The researchers noted that their results were limited by the underreporting of COVID-19 cases and the exclusion of deaths where COVID-19 could have been a contributing or amplifying factor in tandem with other conditions, such as flu.