Vaccine is an important and effective tool to protect from preventable infectious diseases. Neverthless, in the COVID-19 pandemic era, scientific and accurate information are required to responde to false and misleading information on efficacy and safety of immunization in the pediatric age

Agostiniani, Rino

Bozzola, Elena

Corsello, Giovanni

Russo, Rocco

Staiano, Annamaria

English

PubMed

Archivio istituzionale della ricerca - Università di Palermo

Staiano et al. Italian Journal of Pediatrics           (2022) 48:46  https://doi.org/10.1186/s13052-022-01244-3DEBATECOVID 19 vaccine in the pediatric age: the recommendation of the Italian Pediatric SocietyAnnamaria Staiano, Rino Agostiniani, Elena Bozzola* , Rocco Russo and Giovanni Corsello Abstract Vaccine is an important and effective tool to protect from preventable infectious diseases. Neverthless, in the COVID-19 pandemic era, scientific and accurate information are required to responde to false and misleading information on efficacy and safety of immunization in the pediatric age.Keywords: Children, Covid-19 vaccine, Hesitancy© The Author(s) 2022. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creat iveco mmons. org/ licen ses/ by/4. 0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creat iveco mmons. org/ publi cdoma in/ zero/1. 0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.BackgroundVaccine has been widely considered as an important and effective tool to protect from preventable infectious dis-eases. Scientific and accurate information are required to get people informed and to contribute avoiding com-mon myths and rumors based on misinformation [1]. The European Pediatric Association, as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics, strongly recommends COVID-19 immunization in 5–11  years old children to reduce the burden of COVID-19, prevent severe COVID-19 disease and avoid neuropsichological consequences of quaran-tine and isolation among the youngest [2].Main textThe Italian Pediatric Society promote the vaccination in children over 5  years, fighting against false information and unscientific statements and promoting a detailed and accurate answer to families’doubts. The most relevant information to share with the community are reported in the following bulletin.1. As for COVID-19 vaccine, the most frequent con-cern from families is on the safeness for children aged 5–11 years [3]. While COVID-19 vaccines were developed rapidly, all steps were taken to make sure they are safe and effectivive for children. During the development of COVID-19 vaccines, phases over-lapped to speed up the process, but all phases were completed as required for a clinical trial. COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 through 11  years were developed and tested in the same way as adult COVID-19 vaccines. In clinical trial, vaccine side effects were examined and appeared to be mild, similar to those seen with other vaccines recom-mended in infancy [4]. Data produced by the indus-try has been reviewed and analysed by Food and Drug Administration in the United States of Amer-ica, by European Medicines Agency in Europe and Italian Medicines Agency in our Country. So, actu-ally, the vaccine can be considered safe and effective to the target population who will receive it, namely children aged 5–11 years. To enforce this considera-tion, over 5 milions of children in the world already got one and in some cases two shots, without safety concerns. Over 7 millions of COVID 19 vaccine shot, just 8 myocarditis have been demonstrated corre-lated to the immunization. All the children had mild symptoms and promptly recovered. Unlike the mild side effects that some may experience after vaccina-Open Access*Correspondence:  elena.bozzola@opbg.netThe Italian Pediatric Society, Rome, ItalyPage 2 of 2Staiano et al. Italian Journal of Pediatrics           (2022) 48:46 tion, children who got infected with COVID-19 are at risk of getting seriously ill and being hospitalized. From the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic to the  21st December 2021, in Italy children ages 5 through 11 years have experienced 954.657 COVID-19 cases and 35 deaths from COVID-19. From mid October 2021, a severe increase of cases in 6–11  years old children has been documented, mainly in the latest two weeks. In details, in the period 6–19 Decem-ber 2021, 59.605 cases have been notifed in children 5–11  years aged, of whom 215 required hospital admission and 4 intensive unit care [5].2. Getting children 5  years and older vaccinated can help protect them from getting COVID-19, as well as keep them in school and group activities.3. Moreover, as suggested by the American Academy of Pediatrics, COVID-19 vaccination is the advisable way to protect children not only from the infection but also from disease’s short and long term conse-quences, such as long Covid-19 and multisystem inflammatory syndrome [6]. In fact, even children who develop mild symptoms may be affected by sequelae weeks or months after recovering. Getting COVID -19 even if with mild symptoms is not advis-able as it does neither guarantee a stronger immunity nor allow a long protection against the virus. It has been demonstrated that people who got an infec-tion maybe re-infected later in life. In children who have had prior symptomatic or asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection, the administration of a single dose of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 vaccine may be consid-ered, preferably within 6 months from the infection and no later than 12 months after its resolution. A 2 dose schedule is suggested if the infection happened more than one year before the infection.4. Finally, children vaccination contribute to stop the spread of COVID-19 in the community and may help protecting those unvaccinable for age or for underly-ing medical conditions.5. As for safety concern, one of the mayor doubt is on pubertal development and fertility. There is  neither evidence  nor plausible scientific base to state that any vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, may interfere with puberty and female or male fertility. To date, there is no evidence that vaccine ingredients or antibodies developed following COVID-19 vac-cination may interfere with pregnancy. On the con-trary, evidence suggested that females who received COVID-19 vaccine met no problems in becoming pregnant [4, 7].ConclusionsVaccine hesitancy may interfere with universal children immunization. Answering to families’ doubts about vac-cine efficacy, safety and real need may represent a win-ning strategy to promote children immunization.AcknowledgementsNot applicableAuthors’ contributionsAMS planned the manuscript, RA revised literature, EB revised epidemiological data RR revised safety data GC supervised the work. All the authors read and approved the final version.FundingNot applicable.Availability of data and materialsData supporting the considerations reported in the text can be found at Dr. Bozzola’s repository.DeclarationsEthics approval and consent to participateNot applicable.Consent for publicationNot applicable.Competing interestsNot applicable.Received: 5 January 2022   Accepted: 24 February 2022References 1. Palamenghi L, Barello S, Boccia S, Graffigna G. Mistrust in biomedical research and vaccine hesitancy: the forefront challenge in the battle against COVID-19 in Italy. Eur J Epidemiol. 2020;35(8):785–8. 2. Pettoello-Mantovani M, Cardemil C, Cohen R, Levy C, Giardino I, Indrio F, Somekh E. Importance of Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination in Children: Viewpoint and Recommendations of the Union of European National Societies of Pediatrics. J Pediatr. 2021;S0022–3476(21):01273–7. 3. Alfieri NL, Kusma JD, Heard-Garris N, Davis MM, Golbeck E, Barrera L, Macy ML. Parental COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy for children: vulnerability in an urban hotspot. BMC Public Health. 2021;21(1):1662. 4. Covid-19 vaccines for children and teens. https:// www. cdc. gov/ coron avirus/ 2019- ncov/ vacci nes/ recom menda tions/ child ren- teens. html. Last access on  30th December 2021 5. ISS. Covid 19-Epidemiological report. https:// www. epice ntro. iss. it/ coron avirus/ bolle ttino/ Bolle ttino- sorve glian za- integ rata- COVID- 19_ 21- dicem bre- 2021. pdf Last access on  30th December 2021. 6. Zambrano LD, Newhams MM, Olson SM, Halasa NB, Price AM, Boom JA, Sahni LC, et al. Effectiveness of BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) mRNA Vacci-nation Against Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children Among Persons Aged 12–18 Years - United States, July-December 2021. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2022;71(2):52–8. 7. COVID-19 Vaccines in Children and Adolescents. Committee on Infec-tious Diseases. Pediatrics. 2022;149(1):e2021054332.Publisher’s NoteSpringer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in pub-lished maps and institutional affiliations.

COVID 19 vaccine in the pediatric age: the recommendation of the Italian Pediatric Society

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COVID 19 vaccine in the pediatric age: the recommendation of the Italian Pediatric Society

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