The benefits of vaccinating children and adolescents are felt inside Quebec hospitals. However, despite a science that proves its worth a little more every day, several questions remain to be demystified for many parents.
“In the field”, the number of young people hospitalized is breaking records, explains to the Homework Dr. Jesse Papenburg, specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, but the situation could have been much worse without the vaccination.
The fifth wave has caused an undeniable increase in hospitalizations of children and adolescents. Fortunately, two doses of vaccine in a teenager “work 80%” against Omicron, confirms the specialist.
“The rare cases of double-vaccinated adolescents who have hospitalization associated with their COVID-19 are all people who have significant chronic medical conditions as risk factors,” Dr. Jesse Papenburg points out.
Moreover, he is able to observe that the symptoms of the Omicron variant are more like “more classic manifestations of other respiratory viruses”.
Despite this scientific evidence, he still has to routinely demystify vaccine technology to his patients and their families. “Vaccine technology is no longer experimental,” he repeats. The experiments have been done. Randomized trials have shown it to be effective. We have a portrait of the expected side effects. We are talking about more than a billion doses injected. It is the most scrutinized medical intervention in the history of medicine. »
Parents who would like to learn more about the issue can participate in a free web-based information session on Wednesday at noon. Several scientists will answer questions from the public during this conference organized by La science d’abord.
Babies particularly affected
The situation is more worrying among toddlers, the only age group not being able to obtain a vaccine. This discovery causes “a marked increase in hospitalizations” in babies, according to Dr. Papenburg.
The disease worries him especially since this type of infection quickly clogs the “small airways” of very young children. Respiratory syncytial virus infection of the lungs is the leading cause of hospitalization in newborns.
A vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTechn for ages 6 months to 4 years was presented for approval to US officials, who rejected it. This is an “unusual fact”, according to the specialist. He notes that the proposed dose for these children is 3 micrograms of messenger RNA, compared to 10 micrograms for the pediatric vaccine and 30 micrograms for the adult one.
“They saw that, unfortunately, after two doses, they had not reached their immunogenicity target, the level of protective antibodies comparable to that of adults or children 5 to 11 years old. Thus, tests have been relaunched to establish the effectiveness of a 3-dose immunization.
This text is taken from our newsletter “The mail of the coronavirus” of February 21, 2022. To subscribe, click here.