A report by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the weekly COVID-19 hospitalization rates among children and adolescents in the country rose nearly fivefold from late June to mid-August, coinciding with increased circulation of the highly transmissible Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2.

There have been 4.8 million cases of COVID-19 among children in the US since April 2020, according to the American Association of Pediatrics, accounting for about 15 percent of all the country’s documented cases. About 204,000 children cases were added in the last week of August, which accounted for 22.4 percent of the reported weekly COVID-19 cases, according to the association.

This is shameful for the US, the country boasting the world’s strongest medical science. With the largest number of COVID-19 cases and highest death toll related to the virus in the world, Washington owes an apology to its own people for the very bad job it has done in responding to the pandemic.

US politicians should have a guilty conscience for the plight of so many US children, who have been exposed to the danger of being infected with the virus.

Had the US decision-makers displayed enough vigilance to the potential consequences of the pandemic from the very beginning, had they mobilized enough resources to prevent and control the spread of the virus, and had they disabused themselves of the wrong notion to stigmatize China and politicize the origin-tracing of the virus, there would have been the possibility for the virus to have been kept at bay in the US for the benefit of its own people and people in other parts of the world.

Had the US done a good job in containing the spread of the virus, its example would have encouraged the rest of the world to follow the right path in responding to the COVID-19, and many lives would have been spared and the global economy would not have been impacted to such an extent.

It is high time that Washington seriously reflected on the mistakes it has made in terms of its response to the pandemic. The US decision-makers also need to stop pulling the wool over their own eyes with the misconceptions they have been harboring about the world today and the miscalculations they adhere to in dealing with other major economies such as China.

What the world needs now is the global solidarity that will be able to pull together the resources worldwide to fight against the virus. And the US should realize how much it needs that solidarity to make up its own shortcomings in the fight against the virus.

That is where the hope of the world finally winning the battle against the virus lies.