Corona vaccines for children are coming | Sciences | In-depth science and technology report | DW

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For Maja, 10, there is no doubt: children must be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Maja says she was happy to be among the very first children in the world to receive a BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine.

“The first thing I’m going to do is have a huge sleepover with all of my friends, like a party or something,” she said.

Maja was part of a US-based study that could allow authorities to approve the BioNTech-Pfizer mRNA vaccine for children under 12.

On Tuesday (10/26/2021), the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will discuss the results of the study and possibly decide on emergency approval for the vaccine.

The study shows good efficiency

Researchers tested the vaccine on 2,268 children aged 5 to 11. About the same number of children received a placebo.

After the study, the developers said they were confident their vaccine was safe and effective for children in this age group when the dose was reduced.

Children under 11 would get about a third of the dose adults get. At the time of writing, the vaccine has only been approved for children 12 years of age and older.

BioNTech-Pfizer is seeking approval in the US and the EU, where the European Medicines Agency makes these decisions. The EMA has indicated that it will decide in the coming months. Other submissions for approval have been made around the world.

Other vaccine developers and manufacturers, such as AstraZeneca, Novavax, and Johnson & Johnson, are also working on jabs for children.

Have it early or wait?

“I absolutely support the vaccination of children under the age of twelve,” Kawsar Talaat said in an interview with DW. Talaat is Associate Professor of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, United States.

“The only way to get out of this pandemic is to vaccinate as many people as possible and [that goes for] all ages, ”Talaat said.

Jakob Armann, a pediatrician (pediatrician) in Germany, meanwhile, is more reserved. Speaking to DW, Armann said children with co-morbidities should be vaccinated, “for example, if the child has Down’s syndrome.”

But Armann said he would wait “if he’s a healthy child.”

“I would wait until we had more data and were lucky enough to see rare side effects like myocarditis. And then I would make a call to find out who gets the vaccine and who doesn’t,” he said. he declared.

Are the studies sufficiently advanced?

Armann says the BioNTech-Pfizer study involved too few people for communities to confidently start mass vaccination programs.

For example, Armann says, there are signs that some young men and boys get myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle. Cases have tended to be mild and rare – but precisely for this reason, Armann says, a study of just over 2,200 children is too small.

Children’s immune systems activate quickly

There’s another reason some experts advise going slow: Only a few children infected with COVID-19 experience a severe case. Often the infection looks like a mild cold, they say.

The human immune system uses receptors that recognize patterns – like the shape of a virus – to defend the body against a viral attack, Roland Eils said in an interview with DW. But these receptors must be activated.

“When activated, they trigger the production of interferon, which is the main line of defense against any viral infection,” said Eils, who heads the digital health department at Charité University Hospital in Berlin.

“And we found out that children’s immune systems were [very good at activating] these receptors compared to adults, ”he said.

The school as a place of dissemination

But Eils is not against vaccinating children because, he says, even though their infections tend to be mild, they can still pass the virus on to other people.

In Germany last year showed evidence of this. Even when and where the overall incidence rate has increased relatively slowly, schools have sometimes become places of widespread dissemination.

If you have dozens of unvaccinated children sitting against each other, you may see higher incidence rates. In some German communities, there have been weekly incidence rates of 500 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Vaccines don’t just protect you

Talaat says immunizing children will help with herd immunity. It’s a global goal – and a means by which we could possibly stop the spread of the virus.

Beyond that, says Talaat: “The COVID effects [kids’] life in terms of closures, quarantines, inability to go to school, inability to do their normal activities, etc. The best way to get back to normal life is to vaccinate them. “

It would be a way for 10-year-old Maja’s dream to come true and bring all of her friends together for a huge slumber party.

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Author: Daniel Heinrich

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