Children aged 5 to 11, at risk or not, will be able to be vaccinated against the coronavirus as of Wednesday. But is it really necessary? Gérald Kierzek, emergency doctor and medical director of Doctissimo answers. Covid-19: Is childhood vaccination really a priority?
This Monday, December 20, 2021, while the National Consultative Ethics Committee and the High Authority for Health voted in favor of opening vaccination to children aged 5 to 11, the subject remains sensitive in many families.
After having opened it to “at risk” subjects in this age group, the government has already announced its intention to generalize vaccination as soon as possible, on a voluntary basis, in order to try to contain the outbreak of the epidemic which is raging among the youngest children.
“The current context of strong viral circulation reinforces the need to vaccinate children of this age group without further delay”, wrote the Orientation Council for the vaccine strategy, this Wednesday morning. “Children attending primary school constitute the population among which the virus circulates the most “, he clarified. Since October, children aged 6 to 10 years have indeed had the highest incidence rate among school-age groups.
However, according to Gérald Kierzek, emergency doctor, health columnist, medical director of Doctissimo, and author in particular of “Coronavirus, how to protect yourself?”, vaccination of children would not be a priority:
“JI think there is no rush, it should not be a priority to vaccinate children for several reasons ”, he asserted
A questionable benefit
“Firstly, they have no risk of serious form”, did he declare. In fact, the people at risk of developing a severe form of the disease are individuals over the age of 65, obese adults or children who have comorbidities, in other words who are suffering from chronic diseases that weaken their immune system … People for whom the vaccine is really needed could already be vaccinated. Since Monday, the novelty is that children without comorbidities are eligible for vaccination. “The benefit to them versus the risk of the disease is very questionable.”, supported Dr Kierzek.
Collective immunity
“Second, the fact that children infect each other is perhaps not uninteresting from a collective immune plan.”, he added. Indeed, when a child contracts Covid-19, he does not have a serious form, he just has a little cold and he develops antibodies, especially in the blood but also at the ENT level. This form of protection is also called immunoglobulin A, this is an antibody produced by the body that cannot be found in the vaccine and which protects against transmission and contamination. Thanks to this, the child will develop an immunity that will protect the entire population.
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Driving force of the epidemic?
“Third, telling children that they are the reason the virus is spreading is completely epidemiologically wrong.”, He explained. Children are not the engine of the epidemic. “Of course, there is a lot of contamination in schools, but it is because there is a large number of tests carried out. But this positivity rate is quite similar to that of adults. ” he noted.
Unknown risks?
Finally, it is important to analyze the risks. In the short term, the risks are extremely low, but they do exist. “If you do a mass vaccination, the risk that was lower can quickly increase and become more frequent.”, revealed Gérald Kierzek. In the long and medium term, the risks are unfortunately still unknown.
“In medicine, there is a great principle which says: Primum non nocere which means in Latin: “first, do no harm”. It is a sentence that is important to remember. ”, he concluded.
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