Letter: Vaccine data promising for younger children

Editor:

Vaccination, along with other preventative measures, can protect children from COVID-19 using the safe and effective vaccines already recommended for use in adolescents and adults in B.C.

The first clinical trial study based on children less than 12 years old, published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, shows very promising results. More than 2,200 child volunteers were involved in this clinical trial for the vaccines to understand the efficacy and the adverse events. This study showed that the COVID-19 vaccines are remarkably safe and effective before they got emergency use authorization from the FDA. A clinical trial published shows a vaccine highly effective in preventing serious disease, with no severe adverse reactions. More significantly, the results of this clinical trial are notable because they demonstrate good antibody responses and 90% efficacy at this lower dose.

More than half of younger kids 12- to 17 years old in B.C. have been fully vaccinated. The preliminary data on the vaccine's effectiveness in this age group is astonishing and this evidence can be useful and can be very well a strong motivator to inoculate our younger children. A recent vaccine real world data based evaluation study demonstrated that two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were highly effective in preventing COVID-19 hospitalization among persons aged 12 to 18 years. Findings reinforce the importance of vaccination to protect U.S. youths against severe COVID-19. These real world data from 19 pediatric hospitals further suggest that increasing vaccination coverage among this group could reduce the incidence of severe COVID-19.

Preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections in schools adding COVID-19 vaccination for younger children as an additional mitigation measure, might serve several important functions, including protecting everyone at risk for severe COVID-19-associated illness, potentially reducing in-school SARS-CoV-2 transmission, and minimizing interruptions to in-person learning.

Ediriweera Desapriya, Burnaby