According to a study published Monday in the American Medical Association’s JAMA Pediatrics journal, an estimated 37,300 to 43,000 American children have experienced the loss of at least one parent from COVID-19 in the past year.
A closer look at the data found that the burden, which the study authors acknowledge is likely to become “heavier” during the ongoing pandemic, has fallen disproportionately on black children.
Black children make up only 14 percent of children under 18 in the US, but the study estimates they make up 20 percent of children who have lost a parent to the coronavirus.
The authors said they were able to “track parental deaths as the pandemic evolves” by estimating the expected number of affected children for each COVID-19 death.
“We used kinship networks of white and black individuals in the US, estimated by demographic microsimulation, to calculate the grief-processing multiplier, and then used the multiplier to estimate the magnitude of parental death under different mortality scenarios,” they wrote. .
The authors said the estimates are based on demographic models and do not include “grief counseling from non-parental primary caregivers.” They added that the study also relies on “anonymised, publicly available data” and is not considered to be “subject study.”
Their research model, they wrote, “suggests that with every COVID-19 death, 0.078 children aged 0 to 17 years old are affected,” which they say is an “increase of 17.5 to 20.2 percent in the parental death rate. without COVID-19 “.
The authors called the estimated number of children lost to a parent to the coronavirus “staggering,” saying that “sweeping national reforms are needed to address the health, educational and economic impacts of children.”
“Sudden parental death, such as that occurring as a result of COVID-19, can be particularly traumatizing for children, leaving families ill-prepared to endure its consequences,” they wrote.
In addition, COVID-19 losses take place at a time of social isolation, institutional tensions and economic hardship, leaving survivors potentially missing the support they need, she added.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the US has seen nearly 31 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus and more than 555,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic.