October 5, 2024

Israel is among the first countries to recommend vaccinating young kids against the Covid-19 virus. A pediatrician on the advisory committee explains why.

The Israeli Ministry of Health’s Vaccination Advisory Committee voted overwhelmingly – 73 out of 75 members – to recommend vaccinating five- to 11-year-olds against Covid-19.

Israeli HMO clinics began offering the shots on November 22, following the arrival of child-specific doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine over the previous weekend.

“The reason for vaccinating children mentioned in all our discussions is their own health, nothing else,” said committee member Dr. David Greenberg at a recent press conference, laying to rest the notion that the primary consideration is to protect adults.

Greenberg is chief of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Unit of Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheva, professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at Ben-Gurion University’s medical school, and a member of the Israel National Vaccine and Infectious Disease Advisory Board.

“Vaccination rates in Israel are really high, but the epidemiology shows that 55 to 60 percent of all confirmed cases in the last wave were in children under 19 and mainly under 11 years of age. This includes many hospitalizations and complications,” Greenberg said.

Although Covid-19 usually causes mild symptoms in children, he added, “many children get infected, so even if 1% get seriously ill it’s a lot of children.”

Long Covid

Moreover, Ministry of Health data show that up to 47% of recovered children are suffering “long Covid” effects such as loss of concentration, sleep disturbances, and muscle aches.

“We are treating many recovered children in our outpatient clinic who had a mild case. We even had asymptomatic children who ended up [later] in intensive care,” said Greenberg.

A mathematical model presented to the committee predicted that if Israel had started vaccinating five- to 11-year-olds in July 2021, some 100,000 cases of Covid-19 could have been averted as well as 13% of Covid-related deaths, said Greenberg, “but this was not the reason we decided to recommend it.”

“As a vaccinologist, I believe prevention is better than cure. We don’t want anyone to be infected and then medicated. This disease causes death and long-term complications,” said Greenberg.

Will parents hesitate?

The committee’s discussions were guided by available data on the vaccine, outlined in a document published by the Israeli Society for Pediatric Infectious Disease, he added.

“We really believe in the vaccine and its efficacy and safety because of the data,” he said.

He was referring to data Israel has gathered on vaccinated 12- to 17-year-olds as well as Pfizer data indicating 91% efficacy in disease prevention among five- to 11-year-olds, which led the United States to approve the vaccine for emergency use in this age group in late October.