Rome – China’s green light for the Sinovac vaccine for children and young people aged 3 to 17 comes about a week after Israel’s data on myocarditis cases in very young vaccinated people and feeds questions on whether or not to vaccinate children. Relatively few data are available for children aged 12 and over, since the trials were conducted only on adults and very few young people in the world have had the vaccine. There is a complete lack of data on children aged 3 to 12.
What we do know is that “vaccines have proved to be formidable in terms of efficacy and protection” and that “it is right to vaccinate children,” Giuseppe Remuzzi, director of the Mario Negri pharmacological institute, told ANSA. “The data we have concerns children over the age of 12: before this age we have no idea and we have no data”, but “it is important to study children because we will need to find the right dosage”, he observes.
In general it is known that “between 15 and 24 years the immunological reactivity is more lively than in adults”, but going into the details of the anti Covid vaccines, the only data published so far come from the USA and Israel and refer to the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine. The first, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, were submitted to the American regulatory agency Fda for authorization and are based on 2,260 adolescents between 12 and 15 years. Of these 1,131 took the vaccine at the same dose as for adults; the others were given a placebo. They are data that say that «the safety is there, as no unexpected adverse events have been detected, but only common ailments such as fever, headache and joint pain. It is also true that these cases are few to see any adverse events ».
Data from Israel, relating to 5 million vaccinated children, found 257 cases of a rare form of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that in some cases is transient and that in others could have serious consequences. «It is an extremely rare phenomenon but it exists: it cannot be pretended that it does not exist. It must be studied and understood ». Children who fall ill with Covid-19 can run a similar risk, observed the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
There are many open questions, but for Remuzzi the fixed point is that «certainly one day we will have to vaccinate the children» and that we will have to «choose the right time. The “when” to do it – he added – depends on the country you are in and the doses available ». For example, “in Italy today the priority is not children, but 10% of those over 60 who are not vaccinated and the third of those over 50 without the first dose. Before thinking about children, we need to reach 85% -90% of adults who have received the first dose ». Giving the second dose to the elderly and frail, he concludes, “is a way to protect them from the Indian variant, or Delta, destined to replace the English one, or Alpha, within weeks”.