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This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

Within weeks of showing up in the United States,

the Omicron variant has landed record numbers of children in the hospital.

Kids still represent a small percentage of those being hospitalized with COVID-19,

but some parents are understandably anxious, especially those with kids under five who cannot get vaccinated yet.

They are wondering how to navigate life with young children during this surge.

So on this episode of Life Kit, we're posing parents' questions to Dr. Ibuqan Kalu, a pediatric infectious disease doctor at Duke University.

Support for NPR, and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right.

Learn more at RWJF.org. Before we get to the parents' questions, may I ask you just how things are going at your hospital? Are you seeing a lot of kids hospitalized with COVID-19?

Yes, we are seeing a few more than we saw both with the Alpha and Delta surges in the past spring and summer of 2021.

And what ages are you seeing?

And I suppose part B of that question is, are they vaccinated?

So we've seen across all age groups.

We've seen a couple of small infants, and that may be partially because they have other viral infections spread in the

winter, for example, influenza. And then we're seeing some older kids, older than the age of five,

that should be eligible for one of the vaccines out there. Unfortunately, more of the children

that are in the hospital unvaccinated. However, we have younger children that are in the hospital unvaccinated.

However, we have younger children that are not eligible for vaccination and also end up in the

...