Many parents and children have been waiting for this recommendation: On December 9, the Permanent Vaccination Commission (Stiko) announced that children from the age of five can also be vaccinated in Germany with the corona vaccine from BioNTech/Pfizer called "Comirnaty". Although the Stiko does not generally recommend vaccination for all children, it does recommend it if parents and children want it. Therefore, if parents and children wish to do so, five- to eleven-year-olds can now be vaccinated by doctors and at vaccination centres.
As with adults and adolescents, rumours, false claims, questions, and discussions also circulate around childhood vaccination. The #Faktenfuchs has taken a look at the most common ones.
Vaccination is not a trial and properly licensed
Ever since they were approved for adults, vaccination opponents have claimed that the corona vaccines were not really designed as a vaccine at all and were not sufficiently tested and trialled. In a Telegram channel, for example, the #Faktenfuchs found the following message: Parents should not have their children vaccinated with an "only emergency-approved, untested substance", they are "experiments carried out on children".
This is incorrect. Before the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was approved for children by the responsible European Medicines Agency (EMA), it went through a review process. The efficacy and risks of Comirnaty for children aged five and older were observed in a medical study. This was published in the renowned "New England Journal of Medicine" at the beginning of November.
For the age group of five to eleven-year-old children, 2,268 children were randomly divided into two groups. One group was vaccinated twice with Comirnaty (1,517 children), the other group received a placebo (751 children). In the vaccinated group, three cases of Covid-19 occurred after the second vaccination, in the placebo group there were 16 cases. This results in a vaccine efficacy of 90.7 percent. No serious side effects occurred during the vaccinations.
Children are not at high risk of vaccination side effects
Vaccination reactions and side effects have been a constant subject of false claims since vaccinations began. It is true that there are often vaccination reactions such as tiredness, fever, or arm pain. However, severe side effects with serious illnesses are very rare.
On a flyer of a lateral thinking group, for example, the following statements on childhood vaccination can be found: "Children are severely endangered by vaccination". In addition, there are statements such as: "Vaccination can have severe to fatal side effects (...). Vaccinated children of all ages are particularly often affected by severe side effects compared to adults."
As of mid-December, the #Faktenfuchs has looked at the figures from two countries that have been vaccinating children aged five and older against Covid-19 for longer. In the US, children have been allowed to be vaccinated on a large scale since the beginning of November; by December 21, 3.7 million children had been fully vaccinated and another 2.5 million children had already received one dose, according to the US health authority CDC.
The paediatrician Michael Hubmann is a member of the Bavarian state executive committee of the Professional Association of Paediatricians. So far, he is not aware of any serious side effects in a temporal context from the US data, Hubmann said in an interview with #Faktenfuchs in December.
The figures from another country were also unremarkable in terms of side effects. In Israel, the vaccination campaign for children has been running since November 22. Ten days later, no serious side effects had occurred in the first 60,000 vaccinations, The Times of Israel reported after checking with the national health authorities.
Myocarditis can occur, but is usually mild
One disease is often mentioned among the possible side effects: The inflammation of the heart muscle, a so-called myocarditis. Again, a quote from a flyer on child vaccination, circulated by a well-known group of lateral thinkers: "The mRNA vaccinations from BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna can have fatal side effects. In particular, inflammations of the heart muscles are among them. Particularly affected: male vaccinees of younger age."
It is true that myocarditis and pericarditis have occurred as side effects with mRNA vaccines, especially in younger male vaccinees. In Germany, the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute (PEI) monitors such side effects. In its most recent safety report, the PEI states that a total of 1,554 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis were reported after vaccination with Comirnaty or Spikevax (Moderna) by November 30, 2021.
"The reporting rate of myo/pericarditis for Comirnaty is highest among male adolescents and young men (18-29 years) after the second vaccination with 8.97 and 8.68 cases per 100,000 vaccine doses, respectively," the PEI reports. Accordingly, an average of 0.0897 cases are reported per 1,000 vaccinations.
This vaccination side effect can therefore occur, but only rarely. And according to the current state of knowledge, the course of such a myo-/pericarditis is well treatable and usually heals completely. The President of the PEI, Klaus Cichutek, told Bavarian Broadcasting ("BR") in December on the subject of myocarditis in children after a vaccination against Covid-19: "And it runs its course, as we have been told so far, bland - as we say in medical terms. That means benign and it heals."
The PEI's statistics on deaths due to vaccine-induced myo-/pericarditis fit in with this: so far, only in three deaths "based on the autopsy report, the connection with the vaccination was assessed as possible", the PEI states in the safety report. By comparison: By November 30, 2021, a good 107 million vaccine doses of mRNA vaccines had been administered throughout Germany.
Using heart muscle disease as an argument against vaccination is also statistically illogical. It is now known that Covid-19 disease carries a significantly higher risk of the heart muscle disease. This is proven, for example, by an Israeli study from August 2021, which was published in the "New England Journal of Medicine".
Does corona vaccination have any benefit at all for children?
Opponents of vaccination often argue that vaccination has no real benefit for children. "Children and adolescents do not have to fear a severe or even fatal course in the case of a Covid-19 infection," a flyer from a lateral thinker group reads.
It is correct that children and adolescents almost never get severely ill with Covid-19.
Thus, an infection with SARS-Cov-2 does not have the same risks for them as for adults. Michael Hubmann says that even if the numbers are small, vaccinations could effectively further reduce the few cases: "These are small numbers in relation to the number of cases in the age group. But they are bad individual fates."
There are other good reasons to have your child vaccinated anyway, infectiologist and paediatrician Johannes Hübner of the Haunersche Kinderklinik children's hospital in Munich pointed out in a BR24 live broadcast on child vaccination on December 15. Childhood vaccination could protect others who are at high risk of a severe Covid-19 course, Hübner said - for example, the grandmother, the uncle with a previous illness or friends with a weakened immune system. Because children can also be infectious and infect other people with Covid-19.
"If I had children who were in that age group, an eight-year-old child for example, I would have them vaccinated," Hübner therefore concluded. Hubmann also fully agreed with this line of argument.
Besides a very unlikely life-threatening course, however, there are possible long-term consequences of Covid-19 in children. The Long Covid Syndrome is well known. A team of researchers led by Canadian epidemiologist Anna Funk analysed data from 41 emergency departments in ten countries between March 2020 and January 2021. During this period, nearly 1,900 children presented who tested positive for Covid-19. Funk and her team observed the records of these children up to three months after they became ill. Their conclusion: just under six percent of the children still suffered from Covid-19 symptoms such as fever, fatigue, headaches, or loss of taste after the three months had elapsed.
"The serious data assume one to three to five percent," Michael Hubmann says as well. But, the paediatrician continues: "If we now think of the infectivity of the Omicron variant and the large number of cases, these are high numbers of cases in a relatively short time.” Hubmann points out that the Stiko already assumed with the Delta variant that it was highly likely that every child would be vaccinated or ill by the end of the winter.
De facto, low relative numbers can still result in high absolute numbers. An example: If there are one million children with the disease and only two percent Long Covid cases, this would be 20,000 cases.
Conclusion
According to current knowledge, vaccination for children with the new vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech, Comirnaty, is effective, safe, and free of serious side effects. Although children have a low risk of a severe course of Covid-19, experts still recommend vaccination: this can further reduce the risk of passing on the virus to those around them, of severe courses and of secondary diseases such as Long Covid.
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