What the data says about covid-19 cases among children

From those figures, though, we learn that the shift that began with the emergence of the delta variant, spurring the fourth surge that started in late June, has only subtly increased the density of children among new cases. There are rises in hospitalizations and deaths, though they occur only at the end of the time series, thanks in part to the fact that hospitalizations and deaths trail new infection data by several weeks, given how diseases unfold. They are also only shown to be increasing at the end because the data are aggregated by the date of the positive test or the date the case was first reported to the CDC, not by date of hospitalization or death.