Why Utah Pediatrician Says COVID-19 Vaccine for Children is ‘Really Important News’

SALT LAKE CITY – For pediatric experts like Dr Andrew Pavia, a report from a vaccine manufacturer who found their COVID-19 vaccine to be safe and highly effective for children as young as 12 years old is good new.

Drug makers Pfizer and BioNTech, who worked together on one of three vaccines currently available for adults in the United States, released a report that found 100% efficacy among clinical trial participants aged 12. at 15.

The vaccine has already been approved for emergency use in children as young as 16, who were included in studies that started last year. The new study will go through the same process by the Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks before the vaccine is available to children as young as 12 in the United States.

Experts in Utah believe that it is possible that children between the ages of 12 and 15 may be eligible to receive the vaccine around June. It could also, at this point, open vaccine eligibility to more than 200,000 additional Utahns, based on recent population data from the Utah Department of Health provided to KSL.com.

“This is very important news,” Pavia, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Children’s Primary Hospital, said in an online media briefing hours after the study was published.

“This is important news for at least three reasons: The first is that it protects children – this is the most important reason,” he continued. “We often say that children don’t get sick as often as adults and that there aren’t as many hospitalizations or serious consequences, but it’s overwhelming with low praise.”

Pavia pointed out that there were still deaths related to COVID-19 or MIS-C, which is a rare complication of COVID-19 that can develop in children.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists 246 children aged 17 and under who died from causes related to COVID-19 and 44 others from COVID-19 and pneumonia. This is in addition to the “hundreds of thousands” of hospitalizations linked to it as well, Pavie added.

Data from the Utah Department of Health does not list exact numbers in its data, except that there has been at least one child aged 1 to 14 who died of complications from COVID-19 among the more than 2,100 total deaths since March 2020. It also lists 322 hospitalizations in children aged 14 or under.

Pavie said the other reason Wednesday’s news was important is that children, especially adolescents, are key vectors of the infection and this will help the state – and really the country as a whole – to achieve collective immunity, but we cannot do it without vaccinating children.

“Getting them vaccinated will allow them to interact with vulnerable people who cannot be vaccinated or if the vaccines do not work and will reduce the risk to their family members and loved ones because no vaccine is 100% effective.” , did he declare. “And just because Grandma and Grandpa were vaccinated, it adds an important extra layer of protection.”

As for what that means for collective immunity, the percentage of residents under the age of 18 in the state is well above the national average. The Census Bureau still calculates official figures for 2020, but it estimated that 29% of the state’s population in 2019 were under the age of 18, compared to 23% of the total population of the United States.

Data from the Utah Department of Health indicated that there were 212,900 children aged 12 to 15 in Utah in 2019. Public health experts have said that a 70-90% vaccination is likely necessary to achieve collective immunity.

“This will bring us a lot closer to normal once the vaccine is in the arms of 12 to 16 year olds. This will not happen until the FDA has carefully reviewed the data and issued an authorization for use of the vaccine. ’emergency,’ Pavia said. “Then the problem will be to distribute the vaccine to people in these age groups, because it will take a lot of effort.”

Pavia also said on Wednesday that while he and other pedestrians are excited about Pfizer and BioNTech’s announcement, it is important that it goes through a rigorous process and be approved by the FDA to ensure its safety.

Then comes the challenge of dealing with possible hesitation, which in some cases already exists in adults. Pavie blamed some of them on misinformation which can be the result of mistrust, miscommunication, or even intentional misinformation on the part of others in more extreme cases.

As the vaccine becomes more widely available in the weeks and months to come, it is likely that children will be able to be vaccinated in clinics and doctor’s offices. This would give parents the opportunity to have one-on-one discussions with their family provider about any questions or concerns they might have about the vaccine, Pavia explained.

Another important point raised on Wednesday was equal access to the vaccine, which Pavia said may be more difficult for some families in Utah than for others. That’s why he praised the recent vaccine “fairness roadmap” plan that Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson unveiled earlier this month. The plan was created to ensure that all Utahns will have access to the vaccine.

“We have to communicate with parents that there are real benefits for their children, there are real benefits for their families and there are real benefits for the community,” Pavia said. “We need to have that reassurance from trusted sources. For many families, the most trusted source is their doctor, their provider.”

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