ST. LOUIS — Children seen at one of the St. Louis region’s busiest pediatric hospitals suffered a significant increase in firearm injuries and deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent study by the University of Missouri School of Medicine in Columbia.
The study looked at pediatric patients cared for at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Researchers compared the firearm injury rates during the five years before the start of the pandemic to rates from March 2020 through March 2022.