Misinformation about vaccination affects children in the face of the omicron variant

the pandemic of covid-19 it claimed many adult lives in the United States over two years, but it didn’t affect children too much.

However, the rapid spread of the omicron variant has led to record pediatric infections and hospitalizations, and the spread of misinformation about vaccination adds to the risk.

The chances of young people dying from covid-19 remain low. Vaccines greatly reduce the chances of serious illness, and immunized mothers can pass the protection on to their babies.

Despite this, versions have spread such that vaccines can affect the fertility of girls.

Wassim Ballan of Phoenix Children’s Hospital said combating misinformation has become part of his job.

He said parents should understand that vaccines are “the most important tool for protection” of their children, especially to avoid multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, a rare and dangerous complication that can follow a mild covid-19 infection. .

Only 27% of children ages 5 to 11 have received a first dose of the vaccine in the United States.

Hospitalizations of children during the pandemic peaked at 914 per day this month, a dramatic increase from the previous peak of 342 in September 2021.

Protection from the womb

In the first week of January 2022, Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston reported 12 cases of babies admitted to intensive care with covid-19.

Babies are too young to get a coronavirus vaccine, but Kathryn Gray, a maternal-fetal specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said increasing research shows that vaccination during pregnancy leads to antibodies being transferred baby safe.

Expectant mothers have also shown reluctance to receive the vaccine after being excluded from initial clinical trials.

Gray is among those monitoring the situation. “There are no safe signals to date” in the data, he said, but said he is “very confident” that he will be able to tell his patients that the vaccine is safe during pregnancy for both mother and baby.

“If you really want to protect your babies, getting vaccinated is what will give them the most protection right now,” he says.

Health agencies around the world feel the same way, but the initial lack of data continues to be exploited in anti-vaccine messages on social media.

Posts on Facebook and Twitter claimed that stillbirths increased following the push to vaccinate pregnant women.

Epidemiologists Carla DeSisto and Sascha Ellington of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said by contrast that data from 1.2 million births in the United States showed “no evidence that the stillbirth rate is higher high overall during the pandemic.”

But her research revealed the risks of contracting the virus during pregnancy.

“Compared to pregnant women without COVID-19, pregnant women with COVID-19 are at increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, including preterm birth and stillbirth,” the researchers said by email.

“Unvaccinated milk”

Breastfeeding has also been the subject of misinformation campaigns, with publications claiming that babies suffered rashes or even death while being breastfed by a vaccinated mother.

The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine recommends vaccination for those who are breastfeeding and says there is no reason to stop breastfeeding after receiving the vaccine.

Misinformation has become increasingly common in Facebook groups where parents connect to share and sell breast milk, moderators of some of those groups told AFP.

In one of the largest such groups, Bethany Bristow said she was concerned about requests for “unvaccinated milk.”

This New York mom, along with her fellow moderators, decided to ban such solicitations, and the rules for her group of more than 10,500 parents now state: “Advertising or soliciting non-vaccinated milk puts you, your children, and the community at risk.”

Research is finding specific benefits of milk from a vaccinated mother, says Laura Ward, co-director of the Center for Breastfeeding Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

“Antibodies have been detected in the breast milk of vaccinated lactating women. This means that breastfed babies may have some protection against covid-19 if their mothers received the vaccine,” he said.

Gray agreed.

“Breast milk is full of antibodies based on a person’s previous exposures to both vaccines and infections,” he said. “Those things don’t pose a risk to babies, they’re actually useful to protect them.”