Some parents are concerned that their younger children could catch Covid from older siblings who have returned to school, because children under the age of five are not yet able to be vaccined.
Less than half of children have received their first vaccine dose. Australia became the first country to approve the Moderna vaccine for children aged six and over. Pfizer is available to children over the age of five.
Will children under five ever be eligible for a vaccine? How much will be enough for children? Is a first-dose rate of less than 50% in the five to 11-year-old age group enough to protect the most vulnerable?
The Therapeutic Goods Administration has not yet received an application from any pharmaceutical company to extend the use of any approved Covid vaccine to children under five.
If an application is made, the vaccine will need to be shown to be safe and effective in this age group. Any such application will be evaluated by the TGA with the greatest priority.
Results of Pfizer's Covid vaccine in children from six months to four years old are due in April.
The Pfizer dosage for people over the age of 12 is 30 micrograms a dose, while children under the age of 5 receive 10 micrograms a dose. Two doses of three micrograms were given to children in the Pfizer trial.
Pfizer said in December that it was changing the trial design to include a third dose. The immune response in children aged five and up is better than it is in the two to five-year-old age group.
The health department will seek final advice and approval from its independent panel of vaccine experts if a vaccine for children under five is registered by the TGA. This is an important step because Atagi will carefully consider the risks, benefits and uncertainties of the evidence from the clinical trials and any real-world use of the vaccine in this age group that may become available over time.
The vaccinations for children aged five to 11 began in Australia on January 10. The Covid vaccine won't be offered to children in the same age group in England until April. England is focusing its vaccine efforts on children who are immunocompromised.
The roll out for children in England is being described by health officials as non-urgent compared to the roll out for older children and adults. Increasing the vaccine take-up in the five to 11-year-old group is being treated more quickly in Australia.
The US has been pushing for the vaccine of five to 11 year olds. More than seven million children have received Pfizer vaccine in the US.
There are unique contexts in each country that regulators consider, including the proportion of the population that has already had Covid, the variant circulating and the proportion of vulnerable people that have not been vaccined. According to the World Health Organization, countries should consider the individual and population-level benefits of immunising children and adolescents.
The view of the UK's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation was that it may be unethical to vaccine children in order to protect others.
The margin of benefit is too small to support broad child vaccination on health grounds. The advice was changed in February when the JCVI recommended that children bevaccinated against rare cases of severe illness. The experts said that the five to 11 age group may not be recommended in the future.
In Australia, regulators believed that vaccinations would benefit all in the community through decreased infections and severe disease, as well as having indirect benefits through reduced transmission and reduced disruption to schooling, sports and other organised activities.
Those aged five and over who have an immune compromised condition are advised to receive a third dose.
The use of any Covid-19 vaccine as a booster for people under the age of 16 has not been approved by the TGA. The president-elect of the Royal Australian College of Physicians said the two-dose vaccine course generated a strong immune response in young people.
It's too early to tell how long immunity will last in children under 16 years old, and what benefit booster doses would provide.
There is a suggestion that two doses may last longer than adults. It is important that the current focus on Covid vaccination does not replace existing vaccinations in the National Immunisation Program Schedule. Concerns are being raised that other health care interventions are being neglected during the Pandemic.
The data shows that adolescents who received two doses of vaccine were less likely to die.
Small said that the best protection for children under five is for adults and older children to bevaccinated. Hand hygiene, social distancing, cough and sneeze, and mask wearing are public health measures that help prevent infections.
She said that it is important that children attend school and participate in other activities that are important for their health and development.
We know that Covid-19 can cause no symptoms or cause a brief illness in children.
If a child is eligible for vaccine, it is recommended that they get it.
She said that recent data shows evidence of prior infections recently jumped from 45% to 97% in eight to 11-year-olds in the UK within a few weeks during the Omicron outbreak.
According to data from the Netherlands and the US, about three in 100,000 children are hospitalized during the peak of Omicron.
Russell said that about one in 3,000 go on to develop a multi-system inflammatory condition after the acute infection.
There are infections. Vaccination is recommended for these things because they are vaccine-preventable.
No parent would want their child to be a statistic.
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