Serious side effects of Covid vaccine in children are extremely rare, says CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, its acronym in English) released on Thursday (30) two studies that highlight the importance of vaccinating children against the coronavirus.

One study found that serious problems are extremely rare among children ages 5 to 11 who have received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The other, which analyzed hundreds of pediatric admissions in six US cities last summer, found that nearly all children who became seriously ill had not been fully vaccinated.

More than 8 million doses of Pfizer vaccine have been given to children ages 5 to 11 in the US to date. But concern about unknowns of a new vaccine has made some parents hesitant to allow their children to be vaccinated, including some who prefer to wait for the broader immunization, which could reveal any rare problems.

On Dec. 19, about six weeks into the campaign to vaccinate children ages 5 to 11, the CDC said it had received very few reports of serious problems. The agency evaluated reports received from physicians and the public, as well as responses to surveys of parents or guardians of approximately 43,000 children in this age group.

Many of the children surveyed reported pain at the injection site, tiredness or headache, especially after the second dose. Approximately 13% of respondents reported fever after the second injection.

But reports of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that has been associated in rare cases with coronavirus vaccination, remained sparse. The CDC said there were 11 verified reports from doctors, vaccine manufacturers or other members of the public. Of those, seven children had recovered and four were recovering at the time of the report, the CDC said.

The CDC stated that notification rates of vaccine-related myocarditis appeared to be higher among boys and men aged 12 to 29 years.

Several parents or physicians have also reported cases of children aged 5 to 11 years who received the largest and incorrect dose of vaccine, aimed at older children and adults. The CDC said these confusions “were not unexpected” and that most reports mentioned that the children had no problems afterwards.

The CDC detailed two reports of deaths, of girls aged 5 and 6, who, according to the agency, had chronic medical conditions and were in “poor health” before being vaccinated. “In the initial review, no data were found to suggest a causal association between vaccination and death,” the agency said.

The other CDC report on pediatric hospitalizations provided additional evidence on the importance of vaccinating all eligible children. The study, which looked at more than 700 children under 18 who were admitted to hospitals with Covid-19 last summer, found that 0.4% of those children were fully vaccinated.

The study also found that two-thirds of all hospitalized children had a comorbidity, most often obesity, and that about one-third of children age 5 and older were ill with more than one viral infection.

Overall, nearly a third of children became so ill that they needed to be treated in intensive care units and nearly 15% needed medical ventilation. Among all hospitalized children, 1.5% died, the study found. The six hospitals were located in Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Texas and Washington, DC.

“This study demonstrates that unvaccinated children hospitalized for Covid-19 can suffer severe illness, and reinforces the importance of vaccinating all eligible children to provide individual protection and protect those who are not yet eligible for vaccination,” the study authors wrote. .