October 5, 2023 – COVID vaccines are in brief supply, however the challenges parents face to find shots for his or her children make the search much more complex.
There are special doses for kids, and in lots of states children cannot get the shots at pharmacies because pharmacists will not be allowed to vaccinate them based on their age. Parents across the country have reported being unable to get their children vaccinated.
When the CDC announced this Recommendation When it announced in September that every one people aged 6 months and older would receive the brand new seasonal vaccination, the agency noted that 600 children had died of COVID-19 since May, adding that the danger of significant complications, reminiscent of a widely publicized heart problem, is way more common on account of infection with COVID-19 itself in comparison with vaccination.
The seek for a vaccine is unusual for a lot of parents. In earlier years of the pandemic, parents often had their children vaccinated against COVID-19 at pop-up clinics, lots of which were arrange at school parking lots. But this yr, those pop-up clinics are few and much between. This is the primary vaccination campaign without the funding of a declared federal public health emergency that resulted in May.
Five pharmacies within the Washington, D.C. area recently told parent Kevin Goldberg that they don't yet have the new edition of the COVID-19 vaccines for kids.
“Two CVSs near us and the Safeway we normally use told us they didn't have the doses for children – but they had enough trouble getting shots into adults' arms,” said Goldberg, who plans to get his To do a 5-year test. old son Milo, vaccinated. “The local private pharmacy we used said they were expecting him next week and suggested we stop by again at the weekend to see if we could arrange an appointment for him.”
Demand for COVID vaccines for kids has declined. According to the CDC, about 32 million people ages 18 and younger have received a minimum of one dose of a COVID vaccine COVID data trackerthat reports vaccinations through May. But the bivalent booster shot that hit the market last fall was only given to three.5 million people under 18. Demand was particularly low amongst young children: only 125,801 children aged 5 years and younger received the bivalent booster vaccination.
“Oddly enough, I’m not worried yet,” said Goldberg, an attorney. “Of course I would like to give him the booster shot and his flu shot, but there's not much I can do at the moment.
The lack of supply is particularly frustrating since the CDC has strongly recommended that children receive not only the COVID vaccine but also a flu shot.
The new recommendations are that children ages 5 and older receive at least one dose of the updated Pfizer or Moderna vaccines and children ages 6 months to 4 years receive two doses of either vaccine (one of the doses being the updated shot).
This year's vaccinations are slightly different from previous ones Covid vaccinations. Not only do they target a specific mutation of the virus called XBB.1.5 and related variants, but they are also intended to provide protection against strains linked to a surge in cases and hospitalizations over the summer.
Still, more than half of U.S. children between the ages of 6 months and 17 years have not yet received their first COVID-19 vaccination. accordingly the American Academy of Pediatrics. In addition, there are – often misguided – concerns about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines and the possibility of long-term side effects in children and adolescents – such as myocarditis (Myocarditis) or multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-Ca severe immune reaction affecting multiple organs) – continue to influence the decisions of parents and carers about whether or not to vaccinate their children.
Despite these concerns Research has found that the risk of myocarditis is much higher in children who get COVID than in children who are vaccinated against it. It usually also occurs in boys. MIS-C in children after a COVID vaccination is also extremely rare and Research shows Those who develop it may have a specific genetic marker that makes them more susceptible.
Still, some parents remain skeptical.
“I've seen articles about heart problems, especially in boys, and that scares me, especially because my boys are super active,” said Sarah Weaver, a 40-year-old mother of three and English teacher at metro Detroit high school.
“I’m not a risk taker. The risk of what could happen if they did [COVID] seems to outweigh the risks [of vaccination] because children were largely not seriously affected.”
However, experts indicate that COVID is now a number one reason behind death in children and that almost all deaths have occurred in children without underlying medical conditions.
Is myocarditis still an issue?
Questions about vaccine safety increased early within the pandemic as researchers began tracking reports linking the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines to myocarditis in young adult men and adolescents, mostly after the second dose.
Since then, nonetheless, the CDC's surveillance efforts in these cases have seen a big decline.
“It appears that the risk was highest after the second dose of the first series, and we're not seeing it at this point,” said Sean O'Leary, MD, professor of pediatrics on the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Children's Hospital, Colorado, and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases.
“We don’t expect MIS-C to come back with the new booster based on what we’ve seen over the last year and a half,” he said.
Shelby Kutty MD, PhD, director of pediatric and congenital cardiology and professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, agreed.
“There were significantly more patients in the first wave than recently; overall incidence has declined,” he said.
But Kutty also had a crucial message for fogeys and caregivers.
“When we talk about myocarditis, we think of a very scary infection of the heart and its complications. …But it's not a new disease; it can occur in various viral infections,” he said.
“Most people reported [vaccine-related] Overall, the cases were clinically mild and most people recovered within 3 to 5 days without further problems thereafter. They only needed supportive treatment – such as anti-inflammatory drugs – and in almost 90% of patients, symptoms disappeared when they were discharged from hospital,” he said.
In contrast, SARS-CoV-2 infection was and is related to “a significantly increased risk of myocarditis, other cardiac arrhythmias and pericarditis.” [inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart]and an increased risk of hospitalization and death,” he said, also emphasizing that “the actual infection is increased almost 10 to 11 times if the person is not vaccinated.”
What about MIS-C (Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome)?
Another concern that emerged initially of the pandemic (and stays on the forefront of many parents' minds) is MIS-C, a condition that mimics the disease Kawasaki disease It normally occurs in young children and results in inflammation of the blood vessels. Initially, most MIS-C cases developed 2 to 4 weeks after infection with COVID. Since then, cases have remained a couple of month behind peak levels of total COVID-19 infection cases.
Robert W. Frenck Jr., MD, director of the Vaccine Research Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital in Ohio, explained that MIS-C is actually an excessive immune response.
“You get fever, you get conjunctivitis, enlarged lymph nodes, rash, etc. But if you look at the rate and severity of MIS-C from the infection compared to the rate and severity from the vaccine, it's about seven to eight times higher. “,” he said.
According to CDC data, rates for both previous bivalent mRNA vaccines remain quite low so far.
Pediatric COVID in perspective
The deluge of information, headlines and numbers since the start of the pandemic has overwhelmed many parents and caregivers who, like Weaver, want only the best for their children.
“Parents want their children to stay healthy; they want to protect their children,” Frenck said. “They weigh the evidence and say, 'I don't think it's important to vaccinate my child, it's a mild disease, the risk is low.' The problem is that I can’t know whether it’s her child or this child or the other child who is going to have a serious illness.”
Both he and O'Leary said that not only is COVID now among the top 10 causes of death in children, but more than half of COVID-related deaths in children have occurred in children with no underlying or pre-existing medical conditions, meaning that they were preventable. Would these children have been vaccinated?
“You know, if you look at the lists of causes of death in children like cancer, car accidents and suicide, if we had a safe, simple and effective intervention to eliminate them, we would jump on them, right? ” said O'Leary.
“In this case we have that in the vaccine. It’s really tragic when kids die or get really sick because something could have been prevented.”