For those under 18, the first vaccine can be given 4 to 6 months after the illness. The disease is equivalent to one dose of the vaccine in primary healthy children.
Coronary vaccination extension to primary health care for children aged 5-11 was told under Christmas. At the same time, omicron transformation has already taken over the industry in Finland.
Many children have become infected in recent weeks, but only some of the infections remain in official records. Still, in November – December, the proportion of all under-10-year-old reported infections was higher than the proportion of the population in the age group.
How long after an illness should you wait before your child is vaccinated?
Hurry up is not, says the director of the University of Tampere Vaccine Research Center Mika Rämet.
The National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) recommends that the first vaccine be given to children under 18 months of age after 4 to 6 months of illness. For those over 18 years of age, the instructions for taking the first vaccine are two months after the onset of the disease.
The background to the recommendations is that the disease in a healthy child and young person is typically quite mild, Rämet states.
“If you have been exposed to the virus once and recovered from it, there is no need to worry about a serious illness coming in the second time. The immune system has been stimulated and the vaccine can be waited for 4-6 months after the illness. ”
Multi a child of the vaccine age may have become infected just before vaccinations in their own age group began. The timing is tricky, Rämet admits.
“Usually, the basic concept of vaccinations is to first vaccinate and then expose the disease,” he says.
“Vaccination is especially important for children who are at risk for severe coronary heart disease. I assume that vaccinations in such families had time to start as early as last year. ”
According to Rämet, THL’s rule of thumb that a single coronary heart disease or infection may be considered a single dose of vaccine for the immune response also applies well to children.
If you are infected under the age of 18 after the first dose of the vaccine, a second dose is not recommended at this time. The situation may change if the third doses of vaccine at some point become relevant for people under 18 in Finland as well, Rämet estimates.
Read more: Vaccinations for children will start in Helsinki’s schools next week, what should you know about them? The expert answers 16 key questions
What about if you are not sure if your child has recently had a coronary infection or not? According to Rämet, there is no harm in the vaccine in this case.
“The more time you have for an illness, the more benefit the vaccine has. If you have the disease, vaccine reactions such as headaches or nausea may be slightly more severe on average, but there is little difference at the individual level. ”
Recently, so-called hybrid or superimmunity has been written in the media. It refers to the defense response that results from an illness and vaccination.
Read more: Vaccine develops “superimmunity” to coronary heart disease – Expert explains what is going on and what happens to the vaccinee when they become ill
A similar phenomenon in children is still awaited.
“Whether underlying previous exposure or not, the vaccine does improve the defense response and especially the duration of the response. At least the fact that you have the disease and one dose of the vaccine below does not make you miss two doses of the vaccine. ”
Time will tell how well the disease already suffered and the dose of vaccine received will protect against future viral variants.
“It would be desirable for the next variant to be omicron-like, which, however, causes mild symptomatic disease at least once in healthy children and adolescents who have had the disease and been vaccinated.”
From the graph below, you can see how many people aged 5 to 11 in each municipality have received the first dose of coronary vaccine. Coronary vaccines are not given to children under 5 years of age.
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