Washington, Mar 8 (IANS): Weekly child Covid-19 cases in the US have dropped below 100,000 for the first time since August 2021, according to the latest report of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association.

For the week ending March 3, almost 69,000 additional child Covid-19 cases were reported across the country, Xinhua news agency quoted the report as saying on Monday.

This marked the first time weekly child cases had dropped below 100,000 since August last year, said the report.

It was also the sixth consecutive weekly decrease of child Covid-19 cases from the pandemic peak of 1,150,000 added the week ending January 20, according to the report.

Reported Covid-19 cases among children spiked dramatically in 2022 during the Omicron variant surge, and over 4.8 million child cases were reported since the beginning of January.

Over 12.7 million children have tested positive for Covid-19 since the onset of the pandemic in the country in early 2020.

Almost 670,000 of these cases were added in the past four weeks, according to the report.

Since the first week of September 2021, there have been nearly 7.7 million additional child cases in the US, according to the report.

As of Tuesday, the US continued to be the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of Covid cases and deaths at 79,339,202 and 960,310.