School disruption, “long COVID”, all the factors of choice for immunizing young children, says Tam

When most parents decided to have kids, they probably thought some of their most important parenting decisions were about sleep training, extracurricular activities, or the right age to get a phone.

Few people have probably thought about how best to protect their children from a global pandemic that shows no signs of slowing down after nearly a year and a half.

Soon, parents could decide to vaccinate their young children against COVID-19, and according to Canada’s top doctor, they will have to consider more than the safety data.

“It’s a complex set of factors,” Dr Theresa Tam, the said chief public health officer, said at a press briefing on Friday.

There is currently no COVID-19 vaccine approved for use in children under 12 in Canada, but Pfizer earlier this week announced positive results from its trial for children five and older.

The company said the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was safe, well tolerated, and showed strong neutralizing antibody responses in children aged five to 11, with results for children six months to five years old expected soon after completion. of this year.

Once the company submits its findings to the government, Health Canada and the National Advisory Committee on Immunization will carefully consider whether the vaccine is safe and effective for children.

But since the virus poses a lower risk of serious illness and death in children, Dr Nazeem Muhajarine expects parents to be more worried about vaccinating their children than they have been. themselves.

The same goes for the long-standing routine vaccines babies have been receiving for many years, said Muhajarine, professor of community health and epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan.

“If you extrapolate from that to COVID-19 vaccines, I think some parents will be even more concerned about vaccinating their children against COVID-19,” he said in an interview on Friday.

He said parents should consider other factors when weighing the risks and benefits of the vaccine, including the unknown effects of the “long COVID.”

“Some children have shown symptoms, signs and challenges, including cognitive challenges, months and months after this initial recovery,” he said. “I think we don’t know much about the long COVID, and we need to keep that in mind. “

Rare incidents of serious illness and even death in children may also become more common as the virus spreads through the population, Tam’s parents have warned.

“We will see children in hospitals, as well as rare but serious cases, and their numbers can be large if there is a lot of viral activity,” she said.

In Ontario, children under 11 accounted for more than 20% of new COVID-19 cases in the province in the past two days.

That’s up from just 12.6 percent the last week of August.

Parents and policymakers will also need to consider which option is most likely to keep children in school, Tam said.

In Britain, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) could not recommend universal vaccination of healthy children aged 12 to 15 years old solely for health reasons, as the profit margin was small and there was evidence of a link with extremely rare cases of myocarditis – inflammation of the heart.

In Canada, as of September 17, 774 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis, inflammation of the membrane surrounding the heart, have been reported, out of 54 million vaccines administered to date.

Tam said government agencies are closely monitoring the situation because although cases of myocarditis after vaccination are rare, they appear more frequently in young adults.

“This needs to be weighed against significant social, educational, developmental and mental impacts on children in missing schools,” Tam said.

Ultimately, the UK’s four chief medical officers chose to offer vaccines to this age group anyway, in part because of how important it is for children to be able to stay in their classrooms. .

The National Advisory Committee on Immunization and the Public Health Agency of Canada will provide more formal advice when they receive and analyze data on the safety and effectiveness of Pfizer and other vaccine manufacturers.

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