The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that since children and adolescents are at low risk of severe COVID-19 disease, countries should prioritize adults and develop vaccines with the COVAX program to bring supplies to poorer countries. Dosage should be shared.
It said that some rare cases of heart inflammation called myocarditis have been reported in young men who received vaccines based on mRNA technologies – Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna, but these were generally mild and responded to treatment , it said.
Although this risk was not fully determined, it was less than the risk of myocarditis associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection, it said.
WHO’s interim guidance was issued as more regulatory agencies authorize certain vaccines for use in children, including the United States, China, the European Union. India and Israel, and most recently Canada last week.
“Since children and adolescents tend to have milder illness than adults, unless they are in a high-risk group of severe COVID-19, it is less necessary to vaccinate them than older people, who Those with chronic health conditions and health workers.” WHO said.
Children may experience “prolonged COVID-19” with prolonged symptoms, but this was still under investigation, it said.
Several risk factors have been reported for severe COVID-19 in children, including older age, obesity, and pre-existing conditions including type 2 diabetes, asthma and heart disease.
The WHO said maintaining education for all school-age children should be an important priority during the pandemic, although transmission mitigation measures may be needed in schools.
The WHO said that given vaccine supply constraints, vaccination programs should focus on protecting groups at high risk of hospitalization and death.
“As many parts of the world face extreme vaccine shortages, countries with high coverage in at-risk populations should prioritize global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines before vaccinating children, adolescents,” it said.
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