Hepatitis outbreak in children is not related to Covid vaccine, says British government

Many people have spread on social media that there is a link between a mysterious type of hepatitis in children and the Covid vaccine. However, health agencies monitoring the situation in the UK warn that this claim is false.

The children affected by the new hepatitis outbreak in the UK were under five years of age and therefore could not receive the doses against the coronavirus.

But even that fact hasn’t stopped the different posts on social media about this fake call – as well as other theories suggesting that hepatitis may have been caused by the quarantines or the reopening of schools.

So what are the facts we know about the new hepatitis cases so far?

Until April 21, 2022, the WHO (World Health Organization) had registered at least 169 cases of this hepatitis that remains without scientific explanation in children in 11 countries since January.

Of these 169, 114 were in the UK. Since then the British government has confirmed more cases in the country. Until Saturday (30), 145 children had contracted the disease, which is an inflammation of the liver.

None of the five specific viruses that commonly cause hepatitis (classified as A, B, C, D, and E) were found. But most of the children tested tested positive for one type of adenovirus — which is a common family of infections responsible for illnesses ranging from colds to eye infections.

The specific adenovirus detected in the tests causes stomach problems.

Meera Chand, director of clinical and emerging infections at the UK Health Safety Agency (UKHSA), said her research indicates “increasingly” that the rise in hepatitis cases is linked to adenovirus infection. .

“However, we are thoroughly investigating other potential causes,” she said.

Covid vaccine ‘definitely’ not the cause

The UK health agency UKHSA says the Covid vaccine is the only thing that can be ruled out for good at the moment – because none of the affected children have received doses of it.

However, on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and Telegram, the BBC found false claims that these hepatitis cases were caused by the Covid vaccine.

A post on Reddit highlighted the fact that an adenovirus is used in AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccines. But the adenoviruses used in vaccines are harmless and have been modified so that they cannot replicate or cause infection.

They are completely different adenoviruses from those found in children with hepatitis. In addition, these vaccines mentioned are being restricted for use in people aged 40 and over in the UK.

The average age of children who develop hepatitis is three years – an age group that cannot receive any of the Covid vaccines in the UK, where most cases of new hepatitis have been recorded.

An article from a website known for containing false and misleading information about Covid, claiming that the Pfizer vaccine was to blame, was shared on Facebook in English, Spanish, Italian, Chinese and Norwegian.

The article cites a study that was also used as the basis for false claims about vaccines and fertility.

Does Covid cause the new hepatitis?

Some say the decision to send children back to schools without a mask is the cause of hepatitis.

Contrary to the theory that the vaccine causes hepatitis, which is definitely ruled out, the hypothesis that a Covid infection may play a role in hepatitis cases is still being investigated.

Small studies have found unusual cases of hepatitis in a few children who had already tested positive for Covid in Israel, Brazil, India and the US.

But that doesn’t prove that Covid had anything to do with liver disease.

Professor Anil Dhawan, a liver specialist at King’s College Hospital London who is treating some of these children, says he does not at the moment think Covid is behind these cases.

“Because if you look at the number of patients, only 16% tested positive for Covid, and that [hepatite] is not characteristic of Covid,” he said.

Hepatitis is a known, albeit very rare, reaction to adenoviruses, says the expert.

Is it the quarantines fault?

One line of inquiry is that children in general have not been exposed to various infections in their early years because of the pandemic. Now they may be overreacting to the adenovirus because of this.

Some say this would prove that quarantines are the cause of the outbreak.

But this is still a big unknown.

Conor Meehan, professor of microbiology at Nottingham Trent University, agrees that it’s possible that not being exposed to so many viruses in the first few months and years of life could have made these children’s immune systems more vulnerable.

“The exposure you have to viruses is important to build the immune system and happens mainly in the first five years of life”, explains Meehan.

“Most of these cases are in children under five, so they definitely haven’t had the exposure that other older children would have,” he says.

This makes it possible for them to have a stronger reaction to an adenovirus infection.

But, “we hope that this stronger reaction is still just worse versions of what we would normally see.” In other words: severe vomiting and diarrhea, but not hepatitis.

This extremely unusual reaction indicates that there is something else going on, Meehan says, like a mutated virus or an interaction between two viruses.

However, more research is needed before we can say for sure what is causing these still very rare cases.

looking for answers

Events that are distressing and inexplicable create fertile ground for confirmation bias — when people look for information to support what they already believe — according to Professor Gina Neff, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute.

There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding this new hepatitis outbreak, and understandably people are looking for answers, she says.

“When we search online, we feel like we’re looking at a library and all the information in the world is available to us,” she explains.

But Neff argues that our online search results are affected by what we’ve searched before and the algorithms used by search companies and social media.

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