Children under five whose parents had been vaccinated against COVID-19 were then less likely to be victims of a serious infection by the Delta and Omicron variants of the coronavirus, found French researchers.
The study was carried out before the vaccination of children under five was recommended in several countries, which made it possible to measure the impact of the vaccination of parents on them.
“The general idea was to look within a population of children hospitalized for a SARS-CoV-2 infection if the vaccination status of the parents differed from the vaccination coverage in adults in the general population”, summed up Doctor Naïm Ouldali of the Robert-Debré University Hospital, but who was at the CHU Sainte-Justine when the study was carried out.
Based on official data collected in France since 2020, the researchers found that children whose coronavirus infection was serious enough to warrant hospitalization rarely had parents who were both vaccinated against the virus.
However, it should not be concluded that a child under five whose parents are adequately protected does not himself need to be vaccinated, explained Dr Ouldali, since a child who is correctly vaccinated will be less risk of severe infection and consequent hospitalization.
When both parents were vaccinated, the researchers calculated a reduction in the risk of serious infection for a child of 97% for the Delta variant and 79% for the Omicron variant.
” We are talking […] of the benefit of parental vaccination which was extremely important in the prevention of a SARS-CoV-2 infection complicated by hospitalization,” he explained.
Parents of children aged five or under are most often young adults in their thirties for whom “the individual benefit of vaccination is not major”, continued Dr Ouldali, because they are generally healthy and have no particular risk factors for severe SARS-CoV-2 infection.
This is therefore the population that may be the most hesitant to get vaccinated since, apart from the risk of long COVID, they will probably only experience mild symptoms in the event of infection.
” Earnings [de la vaccination] will not only be for you, it will also be for your young children, said Dr. Ouldali for young parents. The message we want to convey is not either: “Do not vaccinate your children because if you are vaccinated, they are quiet.” It’s really to vaccinate both because it allows us to provide additional protection against a risk that can never be zero. »
The findings of this study were published by the medical journal JAMA Open Network.