(NewsNation Now) — Some hospitals in parts of the country are seeing an increase in child COVID patients as the omicron variant spreads.

CDC data shows that about 2,000 children are currently in the hospital battling the virus. That’s up from about 700 cases a month ago.

New York City is seeing perhaps the largest surge in child hospitalizations in the nation.

Since the very beginning of this pandemic, we’ve known that children are affected by COVID differently.

For the longest time, many parents operated under the idea that it just didn’t impact them quite as hard. But now that thinking might be changing.

An alarming trend is emerging in New York City hospitals, as an increasing number of kids are being hospitalized with COVID symptoms from Dec. 11 to Dec. 23.

At the start of the month, New York City hospitals took in an average of 18 young people per day, but on Dec. 23 alone, 115 young New Yorkers were hospitalized.

Pediatric admissions in the city jumped 395%, from 22 kids to 109.

According to the New York State Health Department, nearly all of those children needing medical attention had not received the vaccine. About half hospitalized last week were too young to get the shot.

“Among the children who are aged five to 11 — none had been vaccinated,” New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett said.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul says the state will distribute three and a half million COVID tests to schools this week. She’s urging parents to vaccinate their kids over the holiday break to slow the spread of COVID once classes resume.

“Children five to 11 have been approved since November 3rd,” Hochul said. “So we’re almost up to two solid months we’ve had this opportunity to get children in that age category vaccinated.”

The nationwide rate of pediatric COVID hospitalizations has increased nearly 30% in the last week up to about 260 kids per day.

Ohio and Texas are reporting more than 150 children currently hospitalized with the virus. Doctors in Louisiana are noticing an uptick too.

“We’ve seen a massive increase in pediatric patients presenting with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 and the positivity rate is skyrocketing,” Dr. LeRon Finger, Chief Quality Officer at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, said.

California state epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan is looking at New York as a warning for her state, tweeting “Unfortunately NY is seeing an increase in pediatric hospitalizations (primarily amongst the unvaccinated), and they have similar 5-11yo vaccination rates. Please give your children the gift of vaccine protection as soon as possible as our case #s are increasing rapidly.”

Only 16% of New Yorkers aged five to 11 are completely inoculated, although they’ve only been able to receive the vaccine since November 3.

The uptick in pediatric pediatric cases is particularly concerning because there are so many people being hospitalized in general in New York right now. More than 5,500 New Yorkers are hospitalized with COVID, which is the highest number since February.