Parents Hesitant to Get Their Kids Vaccinated Against COVID-19 Because of Lower Vaccine Efficacy

Lower Vaccine Efficacy covid-19 vaccine Kids Vaccinated Against COVID-19 Children Vaccinated Against COVID

By Joel Brussels , Parent Herald Apr 13, 10:00 pm

Photo: (Photo : Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Recent data suggests parents are still hesitant to get their children vaccinated against COVID-19 because of the lower-than-normal COVID vaccine efficacy in young kids. Two weeks after getting fully jabbed, numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveal that the COVID-19 vaccine is 66 percent effective at preventing omicron infection in adults, 76 percent effective in 12-17-year-olds, and only 66 percent effective in 5-11-year-olds.

Those numbers plummet when you fast forward another two weeks. The COVID vaccine's effectiveness stays the same in adults, drops to 56 percent in teenagers, and crashes down to just 12 percent in young children.

Laura-Anne Cleveland, the associate chief nursing officer at Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children in Denver, told ABC that the vaccine's efficacy had gone down, and that is relating to the studies with other variants.

Mutation and low dosage reasons behind the vaccine's low efficacy in children

Cleveland said there are two things in play about the vaccine's efficacy. The first thing is that the more recent COVID variants have mutated around the COVID vaccines to a degree and are, therefore, less efficacious. The second thing is that the dosage in the FDA-approved child vaccine is only about a third of what it is in adults.

Cleveland added that the manufacturers are trying to understand what doses of vaccine are needed for each variant and the side effects you might have when it comes to that dosage. Cleveland said it is a balancing act between wanting the high enough dose to get the strongest efficacy and the low enough dose so you won't have side effects, with the manufacturers and the people getting those vaccines wanting both.

The CDC revealed that 51 percent of adults had gotten one shot, and 41 percent had gotten two after the first 11 weeks of the vaccine becoming available. The same cannot be said for kids ages 5 to 11, with only 28 percent of children in this age bracket having the first shot and 19 percent having two shots after the first 11 weeks of the COVID vaccine becoming available.

U.S. health officials still recommend COVID vaccine for every age group

According to PLOS, a nonprofit science publisher, the effectiveness of the COVID vaccine is the second-largest thing parents weigh when deciding whether to get their children vaccinated.

Despite the lower effectiveness of the COVID vaccine in children, health officials still highly recommend the vaccine for every age group. However, some of them have urged manufacturers to reconsider the dosing for kids to improve the vaccine's efficacy.

Nowadays, getting a vaccine is critical, with the BA.2 omicron subvariant wreaking havoc in the United States. The U.S. national public health agency revealed on Tuesday, April 12, that the BA.2 sub-variant of omicron was estimated to account for 85.9 percent of the coronavirus variants in the nation, according to a report by Channel News Asia.