How Effective is COVID-19 Vaccination Among Adolescents?

Two new studies report that COVID-19 vaccination strongly protects against both infection and serious illness among adolescents aged from 12 to 18 years during the Delta variant circulating period.

A CDC-supported study, led by Boston Children’s Hospital and published in the Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) found that two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine were 93 percent effective at preventing COVID-19 hospitalization.

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‘The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine prevents COVID-19 infection and severe illness in adolescents.’

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The investigation used a case-control design. The cases were 179 vaccine-eligible patients hospitalized for COVID-19, ages 12-18 years; the 285 controls, matched for age, tested negative for COVID-19 or had asymptomatic infections and were hospitalized for other reasons.

All patients were hospitalized in 16 U.S. states from June 1, 2021, to September 30, 2021, a period when pediatric hospitalizations were surging, especially in the southern U.S. where 61 percent of the cases were enrolled.

Of the 179 patients hospitalized for COVID-19, only 3 percent were vaccinated, versus 33 percent of controls. Of the adolescents hospitalized for COVID-19, 43 percent were admitted to an intensive care unit, 16 percent required life support, and two died.

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All patients requiring ICU care or life support, including the two who died, were unvaccinated. Of the 3 percent of vaccinated adolescents hospitalized for COVID-19, none developed a critical illness.

Another large study of 12- to 18-year-olds in Israel, led by the Clalit Research Institute focused on COVID-19 infection in general. Using health record databases, the investigators compared 94,354 Pfizer-vaccinated adolescents with 94,354 matched unvaccinated controls.

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Fully vaccinated adolescents had a 93 percent decreased risk for symptomatic COVID-19 and a 90 percent decreased risk for documented infection.The findings are published as a letter in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Both teams of researchers hope the new data will help ease vaccine hesitancy among adolescents.

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Source-Medindia