According to a study published in the journal Science, parents who have had a COVID-19 vaccine may be able to protect their kids from a coronaviruses infection.
The Clalit Research Institute collaborated with Harvard Medical School, Ben Gurion University, and Israel's largest healthcare organization to look at households with unvaccinated children.
The protection to kids living in the same household was given by parents who had received two or three doses of Pfizer's vaccine.
Noam Barda, a lecturer at Ben Gurion University and one of the study's authors, told Insider that parents seem to be the most important source of infections in the house.
The researchers looked at 155,000 households with unvaccinated children under the age of 16 between January and March 2021, when the Alpha variant was dominant. Having onevaccinated parent was associated with a 26% lower risk of children getting infections from an unvaccinated parent. Two parents were associated with a lower risk.
The researchers looked at almost 80,000 households with unvaccinated children under the age of 11 between July and September 2021. A boosted parent is 21% less likely to have a child get an infectious disease than a parent who only got two vaccine doses. Having two boosted parents was associated with a lower risk for kids.
The data makes for a very strong public-health statement, Barda said.
He said that parental vaccine isn't a replacement for kids getting shots of their own.
I don't want my kids to be unvaccinated, and we should do everything we can to avoid infections after we do.
The risk of a parent getting an STD was lowered by savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay The shots made parents less likely to spread the disease to others.
During the Alpha period, two vaccine doses lowered a parent's infectiousness in their household by over 70% compared to unvaccinated parent. During the Delta period, a boosted parent's infectiousness went down by 80% compared to a parent who had two vaccine doses.
Vaccines have been shown to lower in-household transmission. A study published Thursday in the journal Science found that two doses of Pfizer's vaccine were 7-23% effective at preventing an infectious person from spreading the virus to their household contacts. Before the Delta variant emerged, the data was collected.
Researchers are still trying to understand why people who arevaccinated are less infectious. Some studies have found no difference in peak viral loads between vaccine and unvaccinated people, but those who arevaccinated might be infectious for shorter periods of time.
The parents who are infectious to the children are less infectious if they arevaccinated. Is it possible that it happens because of the lower viral load? Barda said it was perfectly possible.
Barda said that it is hard to know how well parental vaccine protects kids right now since the Israeli study did not look at vaccine protection during the Omicron period.
The most reasonable guess is that we will see something similar. Barda said that there will be indirect protection. He said that the current vaccines are less effective than Delta or Alpha.
The second Science study found that waning vaccine immunity made it harder to prevent coronaviruses from spreading. In crowded, indoor environments, transmission depends on how often people gather together.
Barda said that it was possible that vaccinations wouldn't protect kids as much as they should. Schools across the country were shut down during the first period of the Israeli study. Many students spent more time at home during the summer because they were on vacation.
Barda said that his study underscores the importance of vaccines for parents.
The vaccine is not authorized for children under the age of 5.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
