Vaccinating kids is a contested issue for health experts

Australia's road to Covid freedom should not rely on kids being vaccinated when the issue remains highly contested among experts.

Children should not be included in the vaccination targets Australia must reach for the country to re-open and our freedoms to be restored.

As early as next week kids aged 12 and above will have access to Pfizer jabs, with the federal government expected to allow bookings at commonwealth-run vaccination centres and GP clinics as soon as it receives approval from the Australian Technical Advisory Group. State run vaccination centres are expected to follow suit.

Infectious disease experts in Australia are split on the merits of giving Covid-19 vaccinations to healthy children with some supporting the move while others argue there is no rush when it comes to that age cohort.

Pfizer is expected to be approved in Australia for use in children aged over 12. Picture: AFP

Among those in favour is Catherine Bennett, chair of epidemiology at Deakin University, who wrote earlier this month that the vaccine would protect children and reduce community transmission.

She also argued that vaccinating children should help protect schools from closures.

“Vaccination will help reduce infections in schools, and therefore the contribution of school transmission in outbreaks,” she wrote. “At a bare minimum, vaccinations should be available to children who live with or frequently visit people who are vulnerable.”

But other infectious disease experts argue that case numbers are a poor measure for healthy children, whose risk of serious complications or death from Covid-19 is near zero.

Infectious disease expert and former deputy chief medical officer, Dr Nick Coatsworth, wrote that “the vaccination of children is contested space” and Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of Sydney, Robert Booy who is also an infectious disease expert said there should be no rush to vaccinate healthy children.

“We shouldn’t be rushing something that for children is not a severe illness,” Prof Booy said.

“For medically at-risk kids with a chronic illness, yes, get them vaccinated if they are between 12 to 15 years. But for healthy kids, we don’t need to rush.”

Australia’s deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth concedes vaccinating kids is a contested issue. Picture: Getty Images

“Children are at really low risk of the complications of Covid … we shouldn’t be rushing something that for children is not a severe illness.”

Martin Makary, professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in July that the evidence behind the vaccination push for children was “flimsy”. His team analysed about 48,000 cases of children under 18 diagnosed with Covid-19.

“Our report found a mortality rate of zero among children without a pre-existing medical condition such as leukaemia. If that trend holds, it has significant implications for healthy kids and whether they need two vaccine doses,” Dr Makary wrote in WSJ.

The US and more than a dozen countries in the European Union offer vaccines to children aged 12 and above.

In the UK, which has experienced the Delta strain for about six months, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has cast doubt on whether vaccinating children would be effective in limiting the spread of the virus from children to adults in a well-vaccinated country.

JCVI’s advice in August extended vaccine availability to everyone aged 16 and above but children aged 12 to 15 can only receive the vaccination if they suffer from a “specific underlying health conditions that put them at risk of severe COVID-19” or if they are “household contacts of persons (adults or children) who are immunosuppressed”.

The Victorian government wants to have every child from year 6 and above fully or partially vaccinated against Covid by the end of the year.

But it must be up to parents if they want to vaccinate their children against Covid-19 given the topic remains a contentious one, even among infectious disease experts.

The only exception is if the child has a pre-existing health issue, including life-limiting conditions and disabilities, that predisposes them to suffering a severe reaction to coronavirus.