New York Times Pens Major Correction After Overstating Child COVID-19 Hospitalizations

The New York Times building in New York City on June 30, 2020. Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images

The New York Times issued a correction Thursday saying it severely misreported the number of child COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States by over 800,000 cases.

The NY Times report, “A New Vaccine Strategy for Children: Just One Dose, for Now,” first reported that about “900,000 children have been hospitalized” with the virus since the start of the pandemic in early 2020. However, the article has since been corrected to say that  “more than 63,000 children were hospitalized with COVID-19 from August 2020 to October 2021.”

A note from the editor was added to the article.

“An earlier version of this article incorrectly described actions taken by regulators in Sweden and Denmark,” the correction also said. “They have halted use of the Moderna vaccine in children; they have not begun offering single doses.”

The article, the editor added, “also misstated the number of COVID hospitalizations in U.S. children. It is more than 63,000 from August 2020 to October 2021, not 900,000 since the beginning of the pandemic. In addition, the article misstated the timing of an [Food and Drug Administration] meeting on authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children. It is later this month, not next week.”

The correction drew significant criticism on Twitter, where journalist and media critic Glenn Greenwald noted that the NY Times recently fired several senior staff members, including COVID-19 reporter Donald McNeil Jr.

“Now we have an incompetent in his place constantly doing this, or saying it’s racist to investigate COVID origins,” Greenwald wrote.

The correction comes after a recent poll from Gallup found that Americans, by and large, significantly overstate the COVID-19 hospitalization rate.

The survey, published late last month, found that 41 percent of registered Democrats believe that there’s a 50 percent chance that an unvaccinated individual will go the hospital for COVID-19, while 21 percent of Republicans and 26 percent of independents believe the same.

Gallup, citing federal health data, said that under different circumstances, the COVID-19 hospitalization rate for both unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals is fewer than 1 percent.

“Democrats are more likely to overstate hospitalization risks for unvaccinated people, which may fuel efforts, often led by Democratic Party leaders, to enforce both mask and vaccine mandates,” the pollster wrote in a writeup on the survey’s findings.

Meanwhile, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released Friday that the seven-day average for new COVID-19 cases has dipped below 100,000 this week.

COVID-19 is the illness caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

The Epoch Times has contacted the NY Times for comment.