Vaccine effectiveness against Long COVID in children
Razzaghi, H; Forrest, CB; Hirabayashi, K; et. al., Pediatrics
Published
January 2024
Journal
Pediatrics
Abstract
Vaccination reduces the risk of acute COVID-19 in children, but it is less clear whether it protects against long COVID. We estimated vaccine effectiveness (VE) against long COVID in children aged 5-17 years. This retrospective cohort study used data from 17 health systems in the RECOVER PCORnet electronic health record (EHR) Program for visits after vaccine availability. Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate VE against long COVID with matching on age group (5-11, 12-17) and time period and adjustment for sex, ethnicity, health system, comorbidity burden, and pre-exposure health care utilization. We examined both probable (symptom-based) and diagnosed long COVID in the year following vaccination.
Authors
Hanieh Razzaghi, Christopher B Forrest, Kathryn Hirabayashi, Qiong Wu, Andrea Allen, Suchitra Rao, Yong Chen, H Timothy Bunnell, Elizabeth A Chrischilles, Lindsay G Cowell, Mollie R Cummins, David A Hanauer, Miranda Higginbotham, Benjamin D Horne, Carol R Horowitz, Ravi Jhaveri, Susan Kim, Aaron Mishkin, Jennifer A Muszynski, Susanna Naggie, Nathan M Pajor, Anuradha Paranjape, Hayden T Schwenk, Marion R Sills, Yacob G Tedla, David A Williams, Charles Bailey
Keywords
Not available
Short Summary
Research shows that the COVID-19 vaccine lowers the chance of children getting sick from COVID. But it is not clear whether the COVID vaccine protects against Long COVID. RECOVER researchers did a study to look at how well vaccines work in protecting children, ages 5–17, against Long COVID. They studied data from a group of more than 1 million children. The vaccine was 42% effective in lowering the chance of getting Long COVID in kids ages 5–11 and 50% effective for kids ages 12–17. The vaccine works best against Long COVID within the first 6 months of getting it. After 6 months, it does not work as well, so getting the vaccine every year is important to prevent Long COVID. These results show that the COVID vaccine can help children 5 years and older to keep from getting very sick. While this study helps scientists understand how vaccines can protect against COVID, they still need to do more research to understand how they protect against Long COVID.