Are you not vaccinated against Covid? Your child risks more serious symptoms. A new French study that analyzed hospitalization data in pediatric Covid wards discovered that the most effective form of protection for the little ones is the immunization of their parents.
Parental vaccination also protects children
The association between vaccination of adults and hospitalization of children emerges from Covid-19 Pediatric ObservatoryFrench surveillance program on pediatric Sars-Cov-2 hospitalizations.
Children and Covid: how to understand that hospitalization is necessary
by Simone Valesini
This cohort study took into consideration the 599 hospitalizations that occurred between May 12, 2021 and February 14, 2022, straddling the Delta and Omicron waves, in different hospitals in Paris. And it became clear that most of the children under 5 with severe symptoms were the children of the unvaccinated. In the first period of 2021 they were eight out of ten.
Covid children, hospitalizations doubled: the majority in the 0-4 range
With the next wave, the percentage dropped to 29%, but only because “Omicron was a more transmissible variant and the effectiveness of the vaccine against the infection was shown to be lower”. Now the new booster updated against Omicron, or the “fourth dose”, could return to better defend even the little ones from the next wave.
The French study
The study coordinated by professor Francois Angoulvantpediatrics at the Necker-Enfants Malades university hospital in Paris, has just been published in the scientific journal Jama Network Open. The tones are not alarmist, but it inevitably represents a warning to all those who are not vaccinated or who have interrupted the process by not submitting to the booster, given that it is not only them who risk catching Covid in a serious form, but also those they love. moreover.
At the start of the pandemic, children were thought to be rarely ill, with mild symptoms and low ability to transmit the virus. Today we know that this is not the case. In Italy, about six out of a thousand children are hospitalized and one out of seven thousand in intensive care. And even if in the majority of cases the infection runs almost asymptomatically, it is not possible to exclude the appearance of complications such as multisystem inflammatory syndrome and long Covid, which symptoms include persistent fatigue, concentration problems, headaches and intestinal disorders.
Long Covid in children: from risk factors to symptoms, what we know
of Deborah Amery
The sample: children under the age of 5
Between 5 and 11 years, the vaccine has been shown to be effective in reducing the risk of infection by 91%. But for all those who cannot be vaccinated due to age or health problems? This is why the French researchers only took into consideration the hospitalizations of children under 5, for whom the vaccine has not yet been approved. In France, “the appearance of the Omicron variant at the end of December 2021 was associated with a rapidly increasing hospitalization rate among infants and children up to 5 years of age – explains Professor Angoulvant – and parental vaccination also represented in the case of that variant a reduced risk of hospitalization. But it is with the data collected during the Delta wave that this “family immunity” was most evident, and it was due to the high efficacy of the vaccines against that variant.
Contagions in the family
The association between parental vaccination and the reduced risk of hospitalization in children also turns the spotlight back on the risk of contagion in the family. “The data collected suggests that parents played an important role in transmitting the virus to their children during both waves, as did the presence of older siblings at home,” concludes the pediatrician.
A study of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention American estimated that people who contract Omicron infect about half of their family members, with adults only slightly more likely than children to spread the virus. The only weapons we have to protect ourselves at home are therefore vaccination, masks and isolation, but it is clear that in the presence of small children these last two alternatives are difficult, if not impossible, to implement.