Stephanie Sy:
Amna, in May, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the CDC would no longer be recommending the COVID shot for healthy children. But, yesterday, the AAP issued contrary guidance, saying all children under the age of 2 should receive a COVID shot to protect from severe illness.
It also called on insurers to continue covering the shots for that age group.
For context, we’re joined now by Dr. Paul Offit, pediatrician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Dr. Offit, thank you for joining the program.
So this new AAP recommendation is based on the conclusion that children under 23 months old are at the highest risk of severe COVID. But isn’t it still relatively rare among children? Do the numbers justify, you think, vaccinating all children under 2?
Dr. Paul Offit, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: So there was a presentation made by Fiona Havers of the CDC in April of this year looking at what has been the impact of COVID on children in the previous year. And what she found was that thousands of children were hospitalized. Of those who were hospitalized, about one in five were admitted to the intensive care unit.
Virtually all were unvaccinated. Half were previously healthy, and 152 children died. Most were less than 4 years of age. So I think the impact of this virus in that age group still warrants getting a vaccine if you have never had one.
