BATON ROUGE, La. (The Livingston Parish News) – On Thursday, the Louisiana Department of Health reported its second COVID-19 related death for a person younger than 18.
No other information on the deceased — including name, city of residence, gender, or underlying health conditions — was made available.
So far, people under the age of 18 have been the least affected age group from the novel coronavirus, accounting for 0.014 percent of the total number of cases (432 of 30,652) and 0.0009 percent of the total number of deaths (2 of 2,135) in Louisiana.
“The biggest challenge with respect to young people is them transmitting the disease to older people, especially those most vulnerable,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said.
In response to a question this week, Edwards said children “from newborn to 18 years” have contracted the novel disease. It’s possible that more children have it than what the Department of Health has listed because, in most cases, children are “asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic,” Edwards said.
“But tragically, they can die from the disease, as we’ve seen,” he said.
David Gray | The News
