By Gary Evans, Medical Writer
With public health officials recently recommending vaccinating children as young as 6 months of age for COVID-19, a clinician voiced a passionate plea to immunize this vulnerable population to prevent severe outcomes and death.
“With SARS Cov-2 virus here to stay, the choice is either to protect our children or let them get infected without that protection — let them have that risk of death, hospitalization, or long-term impacts of COVID,” said Daniel Griffin, MD, PhD, an infectious disease physician at Columbia University.
Speaking in his weekly videocast, Griffin emphasized the severe toll on children and emphasized that they can develop the prolonged nightmarish symptoms of long COVID.1
“As of June 9, 2022, we have 43,000 [children] hospitalized and over 1,000 have died of COVID,” he said. “One-third of all the kids hospitalized appeared completely healthy prior to being hospitalized.”
Moreover, COVID-19 was one of the leading causes of death last year for the age group of those younger than 18 years of age, he added. Regarding long COVID, he cited a recently published study in Denmark.2 The researchers looked at long COVID symptoms in SARS-CoV-2-positive children aged 0 to 14 years and matched controls in Denmark.
Long COVID symptoms were more frequent in infected children, particularly in the youngest age group. Cases had higher odds of reporting at least one symptom lasting more than two months than did controls in the 0-3 years age group, when looking at 478 [40%] of 1,194 cases vs. [27%] of 3,855 controls, the study found.
Griffin interpreted that finding to be a 13% rate of long COVID in the infected children ages 3 years and younger. Symptoms at two months for this group included stomach aches, pain in joints, mood swings, and fevers, he said. And although the gaps between cases and controls narrow as the age of the children increases, “they saw long COVID across all age groups,” he emphasized.
Among Griffin’s patients are children with long COVID, including, as he described it, “a teenage girl whose mother showed me videos of her dancing [and] who now has intractable vomiting by just having her sit up for 45 minutes.”
The authors of the Denmark study concluded, “Compared with controls, children aged 0-14 years who had a SARS-CoV-2 infection had more prevalent long-lasting symptoms,” also stating, “The burden of symptoms among children in the control group requires attention. Long COVID must be recognized and multidisciplinary long COVID clinics for children might be beneficial.”
Beyond long COVID, or perhaps beneath it, are “all the horrible social and mental health impacts that are much harder to quantify” in children, Griffin noted.
This plea for child vaccination comes on the heels of the Food and Drug Administration’s June 17, 2022, approval of the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines, respectively, for children aged 6 months to 5 years and 6 months to 4 years.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) subsequently recommended vaccination for these age groups, noting “no specific safety concerns were identified among recipients of either vaccine.”3
“Both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines met the criteria for immunobridging, which is the comparison of neutralizing antibody levels post-vaccination in young children with those in young adults in whom efficacy had been demonstrated,” the CDC noted.
The CDC also recommends the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine (Spikevax) for children and adolescents ages 6-17 years.
“It is critical that we protect our children and teens from the complications of severe COVID-19 disease,” said Rochelle Walensky, MD, CDC director.
- Racaniello V. TWiV 916: COVID-19 clinical update #122 with Dr. Daniel Griffin. YouTube. Published July 8, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaJN0aTZTog&t=1117s
- Berg SK, Palm P, Nygaard U, et al. Long COVID symptoms in SARS-CoV-2-positive children aged 0-14 years and matched controls in Denmark (LongCOVIDKidsDK): A national, cross-sectional study. Lancet Child Adolesc Health 2022; Jun 22:S2352-4642(22)00154-7. doi: 10.1016/S2352-4642(22)00154-7. [Online ahead of print].
- Fleming-Dutra KE, Wallace M, Moulia DL, et al. Interim recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for use of Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines in children aged 6 months–5 years — United States, June 2022. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2022;71:859-868.
