This week, thousands of Norwegian children and young people started school again, and the green light has been given all over the country for as normal a school day as possible.
– The risk of serious illness is small. But the small part who becomes seriously ill will of course make up more people if very many become infected, says Bodil Håheim, doctor and specialist in childhood diseases, to Dagbladet.
On Wednesday, it became clear that the government is giving the green light to vaccinate 16- and 17-year-olds.
– I am glad that they have now decided to vaccinate down to 16 years, but think a vaccine should be offered down to 12 years. We see in other countries that it is necessary, so why wait? It’s urgent. Ideally, they should have been vaccinated before school starts, if one wants to avoid the spread of infection in schools, now that schools are in practice without infection control measures.
She points out that several other countries have considered it necessary, and that American pediatricians want to vaccinate all the way down to five years.
Flirting with herd immunity
Answer to the week
NIPH is working to assess whether the vaccine should be offered to children up to the age of 12, as several other countries have decided. FHI informs Dagbladet that the assessment will be ready next Thursday, 26 August. For children under 12 years of age, there are currently no approved vaccines.
Camilla (28) had side effects: – Traumatic
Håheim points out that FHI has modeled with 0.1 percent of all children being able to need hospitalization, if they become infected.
– In a FHI-studie, from before the delta variant came, needs 0.4 percent admission, which will give 5170 admissions if everyone under 18 is infected, says Håheim.
The study from FHI is a so-called preprint, and is not peer-reviewed, she emphasizes.
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Håheim also points out that some of the children risk being able to get tendon injuries.
– We do not know how many, but one Norwegian study of people aged 16 – 30 years showed that about half had consequences after six months. It will probably be far fewer the younger they are, but if everyone is infected and it affects 10 percent, then it is 110,000. If it affects as few as 1 percent, then there will be 11,000 children with tendon injuries. Even though only 30 percent of the child population is infected, the numbers are high.
– Risk of relief after one dose
Admission record
In the United States, hospital records were set last weekend among children, with 1,900 corona-infected people under the age of 18 in hospital, according to Reuters.
– This is not last year’s covid. “This is worse, and our children are the ones who will be most affected,” Sally Goza, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, an association for pediatricians in the United States, told CNN.
However, NIPH considers the risk of serious illness in children in Norway to be small.
– There are no data that indicate that there will be an increase in serious illness, but the delta variant is fairly new, so we have not had all the world with follow-up time. But there is nothing to indicate that there will be an increasing proportion of serious illness among those who become infected, says researcher Pål Surén to Dagbladet.
– CANNOT BE COMPARED: Pål Sturén in FHI believes that Norway cannot be compared with the USA, because the situation, both in terms of spread and support for vaccines, is very different. Photo: Ron Adar / M10s / Splash News / NTB
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He is a specialist in childhood diseases and works in the department of children’s health and development at FHI.
Surén also believes that the USA and Norway cannot be compared, because the epidemic is much more widespread in the USA and the support for vaccines is much lower than in this country.
Also in Norway, during the pandemic, there have been cases where children have been hospitalized with the coronavirus. Among other things, there is an increased risk of hospitalization among children with chronic heart or lung disease, congenital syndromes, and a weakened immune system.
– But the majority of the inpatients had no underlying diseases before, so it says that a few children also become seriously ill without having underlying diseases, says Surén.
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– Some uncertainty
However, FHI does not expect that many children will be admitted with corona to Norwegian hospitals.
– But again, there is a certain uncertainty. We do something that we have not tried before by letting the children return to an almost normal schooling. The vast majority of children do not have immunity, so we follow this closely.
– So record hospitalizations among children in the US do not worry you?
– I am not worried on behalf of Norway, but it is of course a very worrying situation for the hardest hit states over there, says the NIPH researcher.
Hospital kneels: – Looks very young
– Some will get serious illness
The vaccines have shown a good effect on teenagers, says Surèn. However, FHI has wished for a better mapping of any rare and serious side effects from larger studies, before they make a final decision.
– But it is clear that there is a risk in not vaccinating as well, in that someone will get a serious illness. But we do not believe that the virus will spread uncontrolled among this age group, and we believe we have time to make that assessment properly before we start. We do not think we risk anything by waiting a few more weeks with that decision.
– Is it urgent to vaccinate this group, if you decide that it should be done?
– Whether it is urgent or not, is a question we do not 100 percent know the answer to. We do not believe that there will be a widespread spread of the delta virus in schools immediately, and we believe we have mechanisms for controlling the situation through the measures we have. It is still the case that you should be away from school when you have respiratory symptoms, and testing and tracking should be initiated immediately when an infected student has been to school.
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Surén says that FHI will hand over its recommendation whether a vaccine should be given to children aged 12 to 15 years, 26 August.
– Regardless of the outcome, it will probably not be relevant to vaccinate teenagers until after mid-September, when all adults have been fully vaccinated.
The containers hide gloomy statistics
Uplifting England data
Suren points to uplifting data from England, which he points out as perhaps the most relevant basis for comparison for Norway.
– The schools were open from April until 23 July, while the delta variant was dominant, and with a fairly extensive spread throughout the summer. However, they had lower levels of infection among children than adults.
Disappointing message about herd immunity
Previous holidays have also given an increase in infection among children and young people, but shown a reduction in infected when they wait back to school, says Surén.
When asked when the government will make a decision on whether the age group 12 to 15 years should be vaccinated, State Secretary Saliba Andreas Korkunc in the Ministry of Health and Care Services answers:
– It is important to make good assessments as younger people rarely get seriously ill from covid-19 and some may experience serious side effects from the vaccines. If the group 12-15 years is to be offered a vaccine, they will in that case be offered after the other groups. We thus still have plenty of time to make a decision. As we have learned so far in the vaccination: The most important thing is not to start quickly, but to make sure that as many people as possible join the finish line, he writes in an e-mail to Dagbladet.
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