“Fortunately, the pandemic situation is improving a lot, but it is now very clear that the Omicron variant increases children’s hospitalizationseffectively and safely protected by the vaccine. Don’t delay their vaccination“. The virologist Roberto Burioni, professor at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan, reiterates the invitation to immunize against Covid-19 even the youngest, who reports via social media a study just published in the ‘New England Journal Of Medicine’.
The authors, Emmanuel B. Walter of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, of Durham (Gb), Kawsar R Talaat of the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore (USA) and Alejandra Gurtman of Pfizer, Research & Development Vaccines, explain that in pediatric pulmonology hospitalizations for Sars-CoV-2 infection more than doubled between the periods mid-November-mid-December 2021 and mid-December 2021-mid-January 2022, therefore with the arrival of the Omicron variant to progressively supplant the Delta.
The researchers also point out that, During the Omicron wave, hospitalized children had fewer pre-existing disease conditions at Covid and slightly different symptoms at the onset of infection. Only in one case, a 15-month-old infant with asthma, positivity to Sars-CoV-2 caused hospitalization in intensive care for acute respiratory distress. None of the children 12 years or older who ended up in hospital, the authors note, were fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
On his ‘Medical Facts’ portal, Burioni highlights the effectiveness of the anti-Covid vaccine in children, commenting on the data released in the last few hours by the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Cdc) on Pfizer / BioNTech’s Comirnaty * in the range of age 5-17 years.
“The excellent news – he highlights – is that, with the data we have available so far, the effectiveness on hospitalizations, therefore against severe forms of disease, is very high, well above 70% in both younger children (5-11 years) and adolescents (12-17 years). The effectiveness is a little lower (especially against the Omicron variant which, we recall, is the one prevalent at the moment in our country) if we consider only the accesses to the emergency room, which can also occur for milder and more moderate forms of COVID-19. Furthermore, protection, as already highlighted by other studies, decreases with the passing of the months, but returns to be higher than 80% after the third dose “.
“These data, therefore, tell us two important things”, remarked the virologist: “The first is that Fortunately, vaccines protect even the smallest from severe forms of disease very well. The second is that, as for adults, even in this age group it is very important to do the booster dose when it is indicated “.
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