United States: Higher COVID-19 vaccination rates among US children could prevent thousands of pediatric hospitalizations and millions of missed school days, an analysis by The Commonwealth Fund and The Yale School of Public Health published Tuesday shows.
If the childhood population received the enhanced COVID-19 booster shot at the same rate that they had been vaccinated against the flu last season – between 50 – 60 percent coverage, at the very least, 38,000 pediatric hospitalizations, including about 9,000 ICU admissions, could be averted.
Moreover, if 80 percent of booster dosage coverage takes place among school-aged children within the year, it is forecasted that over 50,000 hospitalizations can be prevented, as CNN Health reported.
Less Covid-19-related hospitalization burden
Staying out of COVID-19 hospitals may result in a decrease in the number of children in pediatric hospitals who have been full for the last few weeks due to the larger-than-normal number of soft viruses, which include flu, RSV, and COVID-19.
Less than one-fourth of the pediatric inpatient beds are available in the nation today, and it plummeted to 9% in as many as seven states, as the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) indicates.
Dr. Moira Szilagyi, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics said, “The overwhelmed health system means some families may not be able to get the care their child requires for a medical emergency,” while calling the situation a “crisis,” as CNN Health reported.
Lesser Covid cases transmission reports – CDC
Now, the COVID-19 transmission is much lower than at the beginning of the year the level of below 5 percent across the US, and less than 5 percent of the US population lives in a county that is considered to have a high level of COVID-19 community, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Still, the agency reports 2,400 admitted with COVID-19 last week, nearly three times higher than the number of last week.
The study found that the solution potentially allowed kids to go to school more also, something that other research has found would lead to positive results in mental health and academic achievement.
Parents role to get their children vaccinated

Given a 5-day isolation period for mildly ill children and 10-day isolation for children who are hospitalized or very sick, we see that a parental decision to vaccinate their child against COVID-19 with a booster will reduce the number of days of school missed for more than 22 million children, CNN Health reported.
However, the developments in the argument are very unimaginable. To date, only approximately 5 percent of school-age children have received their updated booster shots, a CDC statistic reveals.
Officials urge for Covid-19 boosters
A record number of updated COVID-19 boosters were administered in the first week of November, and US officials say they’re planning to push this week for people to get boosted against COVID-19 in order to offer maximum protection around Thanksgiving, but overall uptake remains low.
To get to 50 percent coverage by the end of the year, the pace of vaccination would have to be at least ten times faster than it’s been in November.
Vaccination rate among children and adults
There is a case of Covid-19 vaccination rates among children, which are below those of adults. While 32 percent of children ages 5 to 11 and 61 percent of those 12 to 17 years old have completed the initial series of COVID-19 vaccinations compared to 78 percent of adults in the population.
The study’s author wrote, “Accelerated vaccination campaigns that achieve high coverage across all ages have the potential to prevent a possible imminent surge in COVID-19, protecting children both directly and indirectly and providing them with additional stability in terms of school attendance and other social engagement,” and, “The cost of inaction could be steep: millions more days of school absenteeism and thousands of preventable hospitalizations for children,” as CNN Health reported.
Drawback of the study as per the experts
This study failed to take into consideration the probability of a new immune-evasive coronavirus variant emerging but did account for both immunities that would decline over time, including both naturally acquired and vaccine-induced ones.
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