Vaccinating children and adolescents against Covid is a good public health measure, concludes a study on Wednesday, which finds that young patients are more likely to develop problems after infection than side effects after their vaccination.
Among those under 18, "a first Covid infection is associated with rare but serious health risks that last for several months," summarizes this study published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, and conducted using retrospective data on several million young British patients between 2020 and 2022.
In contrast, "the risks observed after a first vaccination are limited to the period immediately following it, and are significantly lower than after a SARS-CoV-2 infection," the authors continue, specifying that this refers to the Pfizer vaccine.
This study provides some answers to a particularly sensitive question since the start of the Covid pandemic in the early 2020s: should we vaccinate younger people, in whom the risks linked to infection by SARS-CoV-2 appear to be much lower than in older people?
Indeed, mRNA vaccines – Pfizer’s and Moderna’s, the latter of which is now largely absent from vaccination campaigns – can, in rare cases, cause heart problems.
However, according to the study published Wednesday, the cardiac risks of Covid infection far exceed those associated with the Pfizer vaccine, even in young people. The authors list "thromboembolism, thrombocytopenia, myocarditis, and pericarditis" among these complications.
These results "support the idea that maintaining vaccination among children and young people is an effective public health measure," they conclude.
However, although the authors were able to assess the consequences of infection in all those under 18, they only did the same for vaccination in 5-18 year olds, the administration of the vaccine remaining very rare in very young children.
Above all, these findings "relate to the strains of Covid that were circulating at the time and not the less dangerous ones that are circulating now," clarified pediatrician Adam Finn, independent of the study, in a reaction to the British Science Media Centre.
In France, for example, Covid-19 vaccination is authorized and reimbursed for children and adolescents, but it is not specifically encouraged by health authorities, who are mainly targeting the most at-risk groups.
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