As of today, the parents of 1.3 million children aged 5 to 11 years will receive a letter about the corona vaccination. They can decide for themselves whether to have their children vaccinated. Experts on the pros and cons.
At the very beginning of the pandemic, mayor of Nijmegen Hubert Bruls, who is also chairman of the club of security regions, once jokingly said: ,,We are poldering a bit. In fact, we have employed 17 million virologists since the virus outbreak.” He was referring to all Dutch people who participate in the discussion about the pandemic. For the parents of 5 to 11-year-old children, that statement is now a reality. After all, they can decide for themselves whether to have their child vaccinated or not. Suddenly they are sitting in the virologist’s chair.
“It is super complicated for parents,” says pediatrician-infectiologist/immunologist Lieke Sanders of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). Together with Susan van den Hof, head of the Center for Epidemiology and Surveillance of Infectious Diseases, she provides an explanation to make the choice easier.
“Children rarely need to be hospitalized with corona,” explains Van den Hof. Of all almost 80,000 hospital admissions in 2021, only 143, or 0.2 percent, were children of primary school age. This is very rare for 1.3 million children of that age.
Serious illness
And how sick do you actually get from the new dominant variant omikron? “The risk of a serious illness is probably smaller for children infected with omikron than for the delta variant,” continues the head of epidemiology. “The number of admissions is about two-thirds lower with omikron.”
So much for the good news. “Because the number of hospital admissions does increase with omikron,” warns Van den Hof. “That’s because omikron can spread so well because it evades immunity.” In New York state, the number of admissions due to or with corona is greater for children than for the entire population. “It was mainly unvaccinated children who ended up in hospital there,” she says.
There does not appear to be an increase in the Netherlands. Pediatric pulmonologist Suzanne Terheggen-Lagro of the Emma Children’s Hospital, part of the Amsterdam UMC, recently announced that there was no significant increase in the number of children admitted due to covid.
And then there’s another important point for parents to consider, the experts warned: the serious inflammatory disease called MIS-C. It stands for Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children. The Dutch Ginny Delgado Muti is one of the Dutch children who had that and according to her, more attention should be paid to it. Because weeks after a corona infection, a high fever can suddenly arise, often also abdominal complaints, such as vomiting and diarrhea. In half of these children, this is so serious that they end up in intensive care. The Health Council estimates that MIS-C occurs in about 150 children aged 0 to 19 years. This has not yet led to the death of children in the Netherlands, but it is very serious. “The initial studies suggest that vaccination can prevent MIS-C,” Sanders said.
Mild
And what about the side effects? According to the experts, these are mild, ‘that mainly concerns pain at the puncture site’, says Sanders. “What we are most concerned about is myocarditis,” an inflammation of the heart muscle. Early results, based on 8.6 million shots in American children ages 5 to 11, indicate that this is less common in small children than in teens. On average, two girls and 4.3 boys suffered from this per million children. Sanders: “And the myocarditis that has been reported was mild and resolved quickly.”
Another argument the experts make in favor of vaccination is to protect others. “If you have very vulnerable people in your family, it will help because the chance that you will transmit the virus to that vulnerable family member will be smaller,” continues Van den Hof. “The risk of infection is about two-thirds lower in the first months after vaccinations, so that’s quite a lot. So you might also be doing it to protect grandpa or grandma.”
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