The US Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor's claim about the impact of COVID-19 on children has attracted a lot of attention. During a Friday, January 7 hearing about the legal aspects of the Biden administration's attempt to require employers to force workers to be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing, Sotomayor issued a statement about the number of COVID-19 positive children in 'serious condition.' Her statement, however, has come to be questioned.
"We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators," Sotomayor said during Friday's hearing while talking about the menacing effect of the Omicron variant of COVID. It turns out, Sotomayor's claims are not true.
Under 5,000 juvenile cases were hospitalized due to COVID
According to Federal data of the time when Sotomayor made the claims, less than 5000 people under the age of 18 were hospitalized due to COVID-19, CNN reported. A total of 4,464 children hospitalizations were reported on Thursday. Also, there is no official data on how many of these cases were in 'critical condition.'
Unvaccinated
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky noted in a Sunday interview on Fox that the exact number of children hospitalized with confirmed cases of COVID-19 was under 3,500. Dr. Walensky stressed that the majority of children who are in the hospital are unvaccinated, and 'the children who are not eligible for vaccination, they are most likely to get sick with Covid if their family members aren't vaccinated.'
According to CDC data, a total of 85,369 confirmed cases of COVID-19 under the age of 18 have been admitted to the hospital from August 2020 till Saturday.
The Supreme Court communications office was not available for comments from Sonia Sotomayor.
'Sonia Sotomayor is a liar or an idiot'
Netizens had a lot to say about Sotomayor's falsified claims regarding the impact of COVID-19 on children. Some people even went on to call her an 'idiot.' Some people also asked why has she not been banned from social media for spreading false COVID information.
"If Twitter permanently suspended Marjorie Taylor Greene for Covid disinformation What in God's name are they going to do to Sonia Sotomayor?" one person tweeted.