1 in 5 children have parents who are suspicious of vaccines, may affect future vaccination campaigns

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Outbreaks in the United States of mumps and pertussis, or whooping cough, have also occurred in recent years due to a lack of basic childhood vaccinations, while annual flu vaccinations in children are far too low, according to the CDC.

At a broader level, experts fear that vaccine reluctance could also impact the ability of the United States and other countries to control the coronavirus pandemic.

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The poll varies, but an online poll conducted in May by the Associated Press / NORC Center for Public Affairs found that half of Americans would refuse or hesitate to take a Covid-19 vaccine, while a King’s College study in London found a similar response in the UK. In May, around a quarter of the French population said they would refuse to be vaccinated.

“You have a lot of people who are very concerned about injecting a foreign substance with potential preservatives and things like that into the body, which is very unnatural,” said Dr. Henry Wu, associate professor of infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, which did not participate in the study.

“The irony is that vaccines are really a way to train your body to fight infections naturally,” said Wu, who runs the Emory TravelWell Center.

“Vaccines are the best solution, because imagine what happens when you are really sick with one of these viruses and you end up in the hospital with all kinds of things infused through your body,” Wu said. .

Public health officials fear that the reluctance to get vaccinated will impact parents’ willingness to allow their children to be vaccinated against Covid-19 when a safe and effective vaccine becomes available.

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Because children under five appear to be major carriers – holding between 10 and 100 times more coronavirus genetic material in their noses than older children and adults for weeks without symptoms – avoiding a vaccine could have serious consequences. important consequences.
More than 900,000 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in children, according to figures tracked by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Since most children appear to have little or no symptoms, the number of cases in children is believed to be grossly underreported.

First use of the new model

The new research, published Monday in the Journal of Pediatrics, was led by epidemiologist Tammy Santibanez of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease.

Santibanez and his team said this was the first report on the prevalence of vaccine hesitancy among parents of children between six months and 17 years old using a survey module developed by the center.

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The questions were designed to measure concerns about all types of childhood immunizations, not just the flu shot. Reluctance to vaccination has been defined as “the mental state of retaining doubt or indecision regarding vaccination”.

The study found that parents who were more concerned about the number of vaccines and side effects were more educated and more likely to say that they personally knew someone who had experienced a side effect from the vaccine. They were also more likely to say that they did not consider their child’s doctor to be “the most reliable source of information about vaccines.”

Parents hesitant about immunization were also more likely to have children under six or to be parents of three or more children. These parents were more likely to be concerned about long-term side effects from the vaccines, according to the study.

However, parents in the highest income group were less likely to be hesitant about vaccines or to be concerned about long-term side effects.

Responses to vaccine concerns varied widely among states. For example, only 12.9% of parents in Vermont were “somewhat to very hesitant,” compared to 25.4% in Mississippi.

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The report also compared the number of children vaccinated against the flu in 2019 to the level of concern parents have about the vaccines. Children of parents reluctant to immunize were 26% less likely to be vaccinated against influenza than children of parents who were not concerned about the safety of the vaccine.

“However, even among children of parents who said they were reluctant to vaccinate, 34% to 47% were vaccinated against the flu,” the report says.

A historical concern

The report found that parents of black children were the most hesitant about vaccines, along with concerns about vaccination schedules and serious side effects.

Almost 30% of black parents said they were hesitant about injections in childhood and were concerned about potential side effects compared to the percentage of white parents concerned about childhood injections (17.5%) and potential side effects (19.9%). More than 22% of black parents were concerned about the number of shots a child received at any given time, compared to 18.0% of white parents.

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Black and brown concerns about vaccinations of all kinds have long persisted in the United States, fueled by tragedies such as the infamous Tuskegee affair, a 40-year experiment in which black men were not told that they had syphilis or were not receiving sufficient treatment for their disease. .
Between 1909 and 1979, there were reports that people with Mexican-sounding names were forced to undergo sterilization procedures in California.

Recent social unrest, racial violence and police injustice and disparities in health care all contribute to the common distrust among people of color, said Harriet Washington, author of “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Experimentation from” Colonial Times to the Present ”.

“African Americans are treated differently. They have less access to doctors. When describing their symptoms, they are not believed as often as white people. Medical technology is hidden from them. CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen recently said.

There is a significant challenge ahead, Wu said, highlighting the behavior he sees in his travel clinic dedicated to providing vaccines to the public.

“I know from my experience running an immunization clinic that most people don’t go running for the shot,” Wu said. “A lot of education is important. A lot of confidence. in the process is important.And then it is enough to fight against disinformation – the amount of disinformation that already exists is enormous, as well as the mistrust in many of our public health institutions.

“Developing a Covid vaccine may be the simplest step,” Wu said. “You can have a vaccine that is 100% effective, but if only 30% of people take it, it doesn’t do much. . ”

CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen and Emma Reynolds contributed to this report.

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