Figure. SARS-CoV-2–Positive Children With Upper Airway Infection (UAI).

The figure shows the percentage of pediatric SARS-CoV-2 cases per month among inpatient (solid line) and outpatient/emergency department (dotted line) encounters with a diagnosis of UAI within the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) February 17, 2022, data release. Per N3C policy, only data points in which the group (inpatient or outpatient and emergency department [ED]) had at least 20 patients are shown to prevent exposure of patient counts fewer than 20. Prior months are not shown given patient counts of fewer than 20 per month within the inpatient group before September 2021. Hospitalizations in February 2022 were fewer than 20 and are not shown.

^aThe percentage of sequenced SARS-CoV-2 samples found to be the Omicron strain among samples from weekly variant testing by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 Data Tracker³ increased from 0.6% during the week ending December 4, 2021, to 89.2% during the week ending January 1, 2022.

^bLinear regression identified the rate of change per month in SARS-CoV-2–positive children with a UAI diagnosis as 0.6% (standard error, 0.1%; P = .008) among hospitalized cases (solid line) and 0.2% (standard error, 0.03%; P = .005) among outpatient and emergency department cases (dotted line). Shaded regions indicate 95% CIs.