According to a study, children between five and eleven years of age are very well tolerated by the vaccination.
(Photo: Moment / Getty Images)
The number of young children hospitalized in the United States who tested positive for the coronavirus rose last week to its highest level since the pandemic began. This comes from data from the US Disease Protection Agency (CDC), the American counterpart to the German Robert Koch Institute (RKI), from Friday. The number shakes up – however, the experts give the first all-clear with a view to the severity of the course of the disease after an Omicron infection.
The CDC’s data shows that about four in 100,000 children four years of age or younger were infected with corona on January 1 when they were hospitalized. Compared to the previous month, the rate has doubled, compared to the same point in time last year, it even tripled.
This shows how widespread Omikron is among the youngest and how it leads to a very high number of cases in this age group. The rise in omicron cases in the United States affects all populations.
In slightly older children, however, the Omikron wave shows no change: the hospitalization rate for infected children between the ages of five and eleven remained roughly the same at 0.6 per 100,000. One explanation for the increased number of cases in the younger age group could be that currently many children with other respiratory diseases come to the clinics; So they are instructed not because of, but with Corona. Another: Older children in the USA are already vaccinated in many cases.
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According to the CDC experts, children infected with the Omicron variant still have a much lower risk than adults of becoming seriously ill. The New York Times quotes CDC boss Rochelle Walensky in a report that there are currently no signs of increasingly severe cases among children.
No signal of increased severity in five to eleven year olds
“We have not yet received any signals that there is an increased degree of severity in this age group,” said Walensky at a press conference on Friday. She also pointed out that similar fears about the Delta variant had proven unfounded.
In her opinion, one of the main reasons for the difference between the age groups in terms of hospitalizations is that children from the age of five are entitled to a corona vaccination. It is now crucial to surround children in the age group 0 to 4 years with vaccinated people in order to offer them protection.
In individual states, however, the picture can look completely different. “We have four times as many children right now than we had in any other wave,” said Elaine Cox, senior occupational physician for Riley Children’s Health, Indiana, on Tuesday.
“We are also seeing more and more serious illnesses among the children who come to the hospital,” she said. There are now more children and they are sicker. More than half of the children who are in the hospital need to be admitted to the intensive care unit – at least 40 percent of them need ventilation, she said.
New findings on corona vaccinations for five to eleven year olds
Despite the fact that there are few severe outcomes among children, many parents continue to wonder whether or not to vaccinate their children. The German immunologist Carsten Watzl breaks down the new findings on vaccinations for children between five and eleven years on Twitter.
According to a registration study, he writes, children in this age group were very well tolerated by the vaccination and had no serious side effects.
CDC data from the USA, where more than 8.6 million vaccinations were carried out among five to eleven year olds, also showed that the corona vaccination was very well tolerated in this age group. There were only twelve cases of heart muscle inflammation (myocarditis), “all mild,” writes Watzl. The risk is ten times lower than with twelve to 15 year olds. There is no increased risk in girls.
In addition, the vaccination protects against serious illness, said Watzl. A study from France shows: “The vaccination also protects against PIMS! No PIMS case after full vaccination! “
PIMS (Pediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome) is an inflammatory response. Watzl explains that this can occur three to four weeks after the infection. This affects his three children out of 10,000 infected, 1.6 of whom must be treated in the intensive care unit. A death is not yet known.
Watzl’s conclusion based on the current studies: “The infection represents a relatively low risk for five to eleven year olds, but it is not harmless.” According to this, around one in 2000 infected children with an infection or PIMS would end up in the hospital. “The vaccination can prevent that!”
As a result, the “risk of vaccination is about 100 times lower than that of infection with four cases of myocarditis in a million vaccinations” and it is also very well tolerated. “The vaccination decision must be made by the parents themselves on the basis of this data,” writes the immunologist.
The Covid-19 recommendations of the Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) also show that “1.6 out of 10,000 infected children have to be treated in hospital due to the infection,” writes Watzl. Two out of 100,000 infected children died.
This article first appeared in the “Tagesspiegel”.
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