CDC report: Vaccines protect kids against COVID-19, help avoid ER visits
Vaccines helped protect young children against having to seek emergency treatment for the COVID-19, though the shots' effectiveness wanes over time, a new CDC report says.
Credit: AFP via Getty Images/Clement Mahoudeau
As COVID-19 cases rise across Long Island, a Centers for Disease Control report found that vaccines helped protect young children against having to seek emergency treatment for the virus, though the shots' effectiveness wanes over time.
Children should stay up to date with recommended vaccines and should begin vaccination as soon as they become eligible, the report’s authors concluded.
“It’s an affirmation of what we expected: Certainly those who were vaccinated, compared to those who were unvaccinated, were less likely to require emergency visits,” said Dr. Matthew Harris, attending physician in the pediatric emergency room at Cohen Children's Medical Center in Queens and Northwell Health's director of COVID-19 vaccinations. “This is important because it impacts patients with respect to their time and the financial consequences of missed work and missed school.”
The CDC report examined vaccine effectiveness for more than 170,000 children ages 6 months to 5 years who went to hospital emergency departments or urgent care centers for virus treatment. The data was collected from July 2022 through June in eight states, including New York.
Some children were unvaccinated, some had taken Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines in their early or monovalent formulations, which protected only against the original strain of the virus, and a small number had taken the current or bivalent formulations, which protect against the original strain and its variants.
The two-shot series of the monovalent Moderna vaccine was 46% effective, 14 to 59 days after last dose, falling to 21% after 60 days. The three-shot series of the monovalent Pfizer vaccine was 70% effective and 24% during those periods.
A single dose of either monovalent vaccine provided no protection. But just one dose of the updated bivalent formulation was 80% effective for children who had received a complete primary series 14 days earlier, compared with unvaccinated children.
An FDA advisory committee in June recommended a formula update for COVID vaccines for the United States beginning in the fall.
Doctors generally look for effectiveness rates of close to 50% or higher, said Dr. Asif Noor, NYU Langone pediatric infectious disease specialist.
While the vaccines were tested in trials before wide release, “the advantage here is there’s a bigger pool of children” providing more robust data, he said. Those strong results, he said, “will help shape the message that pediatricians can deliver to parents: ‘Get your kids vaccinated, not only to protect against them getting sick and admitted to the hospital, but also because we all have family members who are immunocompromised.’ ”
Dr. Kerri Fierstein, CEO of Allied Physicians Group, which has more than 35 primary care offices in the New York region, said she wanted to see more data on bivalent formulation and more information about how effective current vaccines are at protecting against serious illness. In the meantime, though, she recommends children get the primary series of vaccines.
The CDC report came on the heels of state and regional data showing that the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 on Long Island has more than doubled in the past month, reflecting a summerlong trend of a gradual but steady increase in cases across the region.
Long Island’s total hospitalizations by the end of last week were 157, compared to 447 a year ago and more than 4,000 in April 2020. Hospitalizations for COVID-19 on Long Island totaled 67 on July 14.
Among Long Island children, on Aug. 16, for those under age 1, there were 71 cases; for children ages 1-4, there were 37 cases. On July 16, for children under 1, there had been 16 cases; for children 1-4, there were eight cases.
As of Aug. 16, according to the state Department of Health, 5,373 Nassau County deaths and 5,024 Suffolk deaths were attributed to COVID. A spokeswoman for the department, Cadence Acquaviva, said the state did not keep data broken out by age.
Harris said hhe got his three children vaccinated as soon as they were eligible and intended to continue with boosters.
“Fall is coming, and we’ll likely see new strains arise,” he said. Vaccinations are “the last mitigation strategy that we have. No one is masking in any meaningful way anymore, and social distancing is out the window.”
As COVID-19 cases rise across Long Island, a Centers for Disease Control report found that vaccines helped protect young children against having to seek emergency treatment for the virus, though the shots' effectiveness wanes over time.
Children should stay up to date with recommended vaccines and should begin vaccination as soon as they become eligible, the report’s authors concluded.
“It’s an affirmation of what we expected: Certainly those who were vaccinated, compared to those who were unvaccinated, were less likely to require emergency visits,” said Dr. Matthew Harris, attending physician in the pediatric emergency room at Cohen Children's Medical Center in Queens and Northwell Health's director of COVID-19 vaccinations. “This is important because it impacts patients with respect to their time and the financial consequences of missed work and missed school.”
The CDC report examined vaccine effectiveness for more than 170,000 children ages 6 months to 5 years who went to hospital emergency departments or urgent care centers for virus treatment. The data was collected from July 2022 through June in eight states, including New York.
WHAT TO KNOW
- Vaccines helped provide protection against emergency department and urgent care visits for young children, according to a new Centers for Disease Control report.
- The report’s numbers provide stronger evidence than previously available clinical trial data.
- With few people masking or distancing, vaccines are “the last mitigation strategy,” one expert said.
Some children were unvaccinated, some had taken Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines in their early or monovalent formulations, which protected only against the original strain of the virus, and a small number had taken the current or bivalent formulations, which protect against the original strain and its variants.
The two-shot series of the monovalent Moderna vaccine was 46% effective, 14 to 59 days after last dose, falling to 21% after 60 days. The three-shot series of the monovalent Pfizer vaccine was 70% effective and 24% during those periods.
A single dose of either monovalent vaccine provided no protection. But just one dose of the updated bivalent formulation was 80% effective for children who had received a complete primary series 14 days earlier, compared with unvaccinated children.
An FDA advisory committee in June recommended a formula update for COVID vaccines for the United States beginning in the fall.
Doctors generally look for effectiveness rates of close to 50% or higher, said Dr. Asif Noor, NYU Langone pediatric infectious disease specialist.
While the vaccines were tested in trials before wide release, “the advantage here is there’s a bigger pool of children” providing more robust data, he said. Those strong results, he said, “will help shape the message that pediatricians can deliver to parents: ‘Get your kids vaccinated, not only to protect against them getting sick and admitted to the hospital, but also because we all have family members who are immunocompromised.’ ”
Dr. Kerri Fierstein, CEO of Allied Physicians Group, which has more than 35 primary care offices in the New York region, said she wanted to see more data on bivalent formulation and more information about how effective current vaccines are at protecting against serious illness. In the meantime, though, she recommends children get the primary series of vaccines.
The CDC report came on the heels of state and regional data showing that the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 on Long Island has more than doubled in the past month, reflecting a summerlong trend of a gradual but steady increase in cases across the region.
Long Island’s total hospitalizations by the end of last week were 157, compared to 447 a year ago and more than 4,000 in April 2020. Hospitalizations for COVID-19 on Long Island totaled 67 on July 14.
Among Long Island children, on Aug. 16, for those under age 1, there were 71 cases; for children ages 1-4, there were 37 cases. On July 16, for children under 1, there had been 16 cases; for children 1-4, there were eight cases.
As of Aug. 16, according to the state Department of Health, 5,373 Nassau County deaths and 5,024 Suffolk deaths were attributed to COVID. A spokeswoman for the department, Cadence Acquaviva, said the state did not keep data broken out by age.
Harris said hhe got his three children vaccinated as soon as they were eligible and intended to continue with boosters.
“Fall is coming, and we’ll likely see new strains arise,” he said. Vaccinations are “the last mitigation strategy that we have. No one is masking in any meaningful way anymore, and social distancing is out the window.”
