The vaccination campaign is proceeding apace, and in Italy since early June vaccines are available for all citizens over 12 who wish to be immunized. With the opening to the younger population groups, the first doubts arise: is it good to vaccinate adolescents? Do the benefits outweigh the risks? Russell Viner, pediatrician and professor at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (UK), takes stock of the situation in an article published in the Guardian.
We have seen this with the case of Spain, where end-of-school trips and illegal parties have contributed to a significant increase in cases among the youngest: among those who are not vaccinated the coronavirus, especially in its most contagious variants, spreads rapid. If it is true that younger people generally do not run high risks of contracting covid in a severe form, it is equally true that they can infect parents and grandparents, vaccinated but not 100% protected.
“We know that about 40% of adolescents have already developed antibodies to covid, which means they became infected during the first year of the pandemic,” says Viner. Most children contract covid in a light or asymptomatic form: in Italy, out of over 100,000 patients who died from covid, just 19 were minors (0.02% of the total), and in most cases they were young people with previous pathologies .
Pros and cons. Vaccinating the very young certainly has positive implications, including the decrease in transmission of the virus between adolescents and vulnerable adults and the reduction of the risk of contracting the disease in a severe form (risk, the second, almost non-existent in healthy subjects). The risks of a post-covid syndrome must also be placed on the scales, still little studied but which must be taken into consideration: according to a study published in The Lancet, between 8% and 50% of infected minors have experienced symptoms long-term even after the disease has ended, such as fatigue, cough or inflammation.
On the other hand, there are also gods versus the vaccination of adolescents, which mainly concern any side effects following vaccines and, above all, the fact that vaccinating other sections of the population is a priority.
Most vulnerable teenagers first. “I think it’s reasonable to offer the vaccine now to the most vulnerable and chronically ill adolescents, and wait for the rest of the healthy children,” says Viner. According to the pediatrician, it is better to give priority to completing the vaccination of the older groups, and then use the remaining doses to keep the promise of help made to the populations of the Third World, where vaccination campaigns are proceeding slowly. In the meantime, we will have to keep our guard up to prevent the repetition of situations such as those experienced in the Iberian Peninsula, which would nullify all the efforts we have been making for months to restart and put the pandemic nightmare behind us once and for all.