A report published Friday revealed that nearly one-third of Florida’s youth under the age of 18 tested positive for the coronavirus, while the positivity rate for Florida’s overall population stands at 11%. Florida tested 54,022 residents under the age of 18 for COVID-19 and found that 31% came back positive.

According to Fox News, an April study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found less than 2% of kids under the age of 18 accounted for reported cases of the disease, a far cry from statistics from the Sunshine state.

Dr. Alina Alonso, Palm Beach County’s health department director, warned county commissioners that there’s too much unknown about the long-term health consequences of the disease for children.

“They are seeing there is damage to the lungs in these asymptomatic children,” she told the Sun Sentinel newspaper. “We don’t know how this is going to manifest a year from now or two years from now. Is that child going to have chronic pulmonary problems or not?”

Her comments do not correspond with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' position, who has said that children are at low risk, and that classrooms need to be reopened this fall. DeSantis said he feels safe sending his own children back to school.

Mathematical modeling studies have shown that kids and teens appear far less likely than adults to actually get infected with the virus. According to NPR, professor Rosalind Eggo, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said:

“What we found was that people under 20 were about half as susceptible to infection as people over 20.”

But the Florida statistics have Alonso worried.

“This is not the virus you bring everybody together with to make sure you catch it and get it over with,” Alonso told the Sun Sentinel. “This is something serious, and we are learning new information about this virus every day.”

While the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) acknowledged that children and adolescents are “less likely to be symptomatic and less likely to have severe disease” resulting from COVID-19, according to Fox News, they suggested that health experts be the ones to decide whether or not schools should reopen in the fall.