Child drowning rates in pools and spas have skyrocketed this swim season.
From April through July, 2024, Service Industry News has discovered a total of 148 child drownings in pools and spas (102 boys and 46 girls), which is a greater than 60-percent increase for the same four months we surveyed in the years 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Since 2015, Service Industry News has been tracking media-reported drownings. Every issue features our Not on My Watch column, a section that chronicles the incidence of pool and spa drownings.
From this year’s data, it has been impossible not to notice a dramatic increase.
In May 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that drowning deaths have been on the rise in the United States, reversing decades of decline. The study investigated the total number of child drownings from 2020 to 2022, compared to 2019. The study found that there was about a 30-percent increase in drowning rates among children under 4 following the pandemic.
According to the CDC, one possible reason for the increase was the country’s response to the pandemic, which disrupted infrastructure, limiting access to swimming. Many aquatic programs were shut down, and lifeguard training was halted. Children simply weren’t learning how to swim. And research shows that swim lessons can reduce the risk of drowning by 88 percent.
That hangover seems to be climaxing this year: the CDC has yet to publish data for the current swim season, so allow us to be the first to report that this summer has been a shock.
For example, in 2023, from April through July, Service Industry News discovered a total of 92 children under the age of 16 drowned in a pool or spa.
In 2022, Service Industry News discovered a total of 95 child deaths for those same months.
In 2021, Service Industry News found 93.
The data for 2020 may have been unreliable: Due to media focus on the COVID 19 pandemic, child drownings may have been underreported. Service Industry News discovered 67 child drowning deaths from April through July.
At press time in August 2024, we cannot report this pool and spa swim season’s final numbers. But we can say we found 24 child deaths in April; 41 child deaths in May; 36 child deaths in June; and 47 child deaths in July — a total of 148.
For April and May — not even considered normal swim months — this year’s drowning deaths were about double what they were for those same two months in the three preceding years.
April and May 2020: we found 31 child pool and spa drowning deaths.
April and May 2021: we found 35 child pool and spa drowning deaths.
April and May 2022: we found 31 child pool and spa drowning deaths.
April and May 2023: we found 36 child pool and spa drowning deaths. April and May 2024: we found 65 child pool and spa drowning deaths.
It was springtime. These children were, for the most part, not supposed to be swimming at all.
They got out of the house unnoticed; they didn’t know how to swim; there was no barrier around the pool.
The National Drowning Prevention Alliance advises 5 layers of protection against drowning: Barriers & alarms; supervision; water competency; life jackets; and emergency preparation.
It seems these layers of protection are not in place in much of the country today.
