Study: California Overcounted Kids’ COVID Hospitalizations by 40%

A new study by a pediatrics medical journal offers a stunning rebuke of COVID-19 misinformation — if not disinformation — passed from California hospitals with respect to child hospitalizations from the disease.

In fact, California overcounted child hospitalizations by at least 40%, therefore distorting national numbers on the effect of the disease on children from “already extremely low relative to adults” to “making the actual rates vanishingly small,” New York magazine’s Intelligencer reported from two studies published in the journal Hospital Pediatrics.

“Taken together, these studies underscore the importance of clearly distinguishing between children hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2 found on universal testing versus those hospitalized for COVID-19 disease,” Amy Beck and Dr. Monica Gandhi reported in a study titled, “Adjudicating Reasons for Hospitalization Shows That Severe Illness From COVID-19 in Children Is Rare.”