With the European Medicines Agency giving the green light for the use of Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine in 12-15 year-olds (see EUROPE 12729/19), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) published a report on Tuesday 1 June aimed at helping European public health authorities make decisions on the use of this vaccine in adolescents.
The report identifies three “potential objectives” to be considered: protecting the health of adolescents, “normalising” their lives and reducing viral circulation.
Regarding the first objective, the ECDC notes that although adolescents have a low risk of serious illness, hospitalisation and death, severe forms of Covid-19 can still occur in this age group, especially in adolescents with conditions such as diabetes, or neurological, cardiac and pulmonary diseases.
It also recalls that a few rare cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) have been observed in previously healthy young people who have contracted the virus. It does not rule out that SARS-CoV-2 variants may lead to increased rates of severe outcomes in adolescents. “In this case, the direct benefit of vaccinating 12- to 18-year-olds will increase”, it concludes.
Regarding to the objective of “normalising” the lives of adolescents, the ECDC believes that vaccination could enable them to return to normal more quickly, thereby limiting the negative effects that the pandemic may have had on their mental health and well-being (anxiety, eating and sleeping disorders, depression).
Finally, the ECDC believes that including adolescents in the vaccination campaign could help to reduce the circulation of the virus in the general population, especially since “the number of people that adolescents meet on average has remained higher than that of adults”.
The focus may be on reducing transmission “as significant progress is made towards the objective of reducing severe disease and mortality, through the prioritised vaccination of older people and risk groups”, the agency says.
It therefore concludes that priority should be given to vaccinating adolescents at high risk of severe Covid-19, as is the case in other age groups, and stresses that the epidemiological situation and vaccination rate in older age groups should be carefully considered before targeting younger age groups.
To consult the report: https://bit.ly/3cdmwRT (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)