34 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • JULY 2021
KIDS 12 AND UP ARE ROLL UP THEIR SLEEVES, BUT SOME PARENTS SAY, “NOT SO FAST.”
“It’s a misstatement to say children
and adolescents do not get sick from
Covid-19,” said Matthew Harris, M.D.,
assistant professor of pediatrics and
emergency medicine at the Donald and
Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at
Hofstra/Northwell and medical director
of Northwell Health’s Covid-19 vaccination
program. “We have seen critically
ill children and adolescents with Covid
and Covid-related multisystem inflammatory
syndrome. Parts of the country
with low vaccination rates are seeing a
rise in the Delta variant of Covid, which
is prevalent in India. This is leading to an
increase in adolescents who are extraordinarily
sick in intensive care, which is a
totally preventable outcome.”
For the week ending June 10, minors
accounted for 19.0 percent of newly
reported Covid-19 cases in the United
States, according to the American
Academy of Pediatrics. While the vast
majority of children have mild symptoms
or are asymptomatic, 322 children
died from Covid-19 as of late May and
thousands have been hospitalized.
“The FDA can only authorize a medical
product if the benefit outweighs the
risk,” said Talia Berookhim, a consultant
pharmacist with Community Care
Rx, a Hempstead-based long-term care
pharmacy. “If the benefits didn’t outweigh
the known and potential risks in
children, the vaccine would not have been
authorized for children.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said discussions
are underway about whether K-12 schools
will require Covid-19 vaccinations once
the vaccines have been fully approved by
the FDA. So far, Pfizer has applied for full
approval for ages 16 and up and Moderna,
for ages 18 and up. Moderna also recently
applied for emergency use authorization
for its vaccines for children ages 12 to 17,
while Pfizer expects to seek emergency
use authorization for vaccines for children
ages 2 to 11 in September.
Carole Lieberman, M.D., a psychiatrist
and radio and TV talk show host, who
believes vaccinations in general should
be optional, says children should not be
required to receive the Covid-19 vaccine.
“There’s no way to prove that 18 years
after getting the vaccine there won’t be
a bad side effect once the child’s body has
had time to mature,” said Dr. Lieberman,
a Stony Brook University alum currently
based in Beverly Hills.
Dr. Harris says he recognizes that there is
parental concern and hesitancy about the
long-term effects of the vaccines.
“But there has not been a vaccine in the
modern era that has been linked in any
meaningful way to poor outcomes,” Dr.
Harris said. “What we do see all too often
in hospitals are the consequences of being
unvaccinated – particularly meningitis,
measles, and complications from serious
influenza infections.”
While there are only a few months of data
on the impacts of the vaccines on children,
the long-term effects of coronavirus
infection on a developing body are also
unknown. The American Academy of Pediatrics
wrote, “There is an urgent need to
collect more data on longer-term impacts
of the pandemic on children, including
ways the virus may harm the long-term
physical health of infected children.”
More than 175 million Americans had
received at least one dose of the vaccine
as of June 17.
“The vaccines have been under intensive
safety monitoring,” Berookhim said. “Serious
side effects have been extremely
rare.”
The Centers for Disease Control is currently
investigating a higher-than-normal
incidence of a type of heart inflammation
that has been reported following the
Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, particularly
in individuals 30 years and younger, but a
causal link has yet to be established.
“It’s a very small number of people,”
Dr. Harris said. “None of the cases have
resulted in death, and very few have
resulted in ICU admissions.”
Dr. Harris’ children are younger than
12, but once the vaccine is authorized for
younger children, “they will be first in
line,” he said.
“I want people to recognize this is
not the time to be complacent,” Dr.
Harris said. “This is the time to drive
the final nail in the coffin of Covid,
and we do that with widespread
vaccination.”
PRESS HEALTH
continued from page 33
"The vaccines have been under intensive
monitoring," said Talia Berookhim.
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
