A big step for immunity?
Vaccinating children against Covid-19 has so far not been a priority in any country in the world.
And for good reason: the youngest seem less exposed to severe cases of the coronavirus.
However, one day achieving collective immunity against Covid-19 involves getting children into the vaccine dance.
READ ALSO>
Covid-19: follow our direct
Pfizer / BioNTech, the alliance of American and German laboratories, filed on Friday with the United States Medicines Agency (FDA) an emergency extension request for its vaccine against Covid-19 to adolescents aged 12 to 15 years old.
She plans to make this request to "other regulatory authorities in the world in the coming days," she said in a statement.
Why care about childhood immunization?
Children were hitherto largely absent from the vaccination strategy: favoring the elderly and the vulnerable seemed to be, in the vast majority of countries, a matter of common sense.
But the more the vaccine campaigns advance, the closer the objective of collective immunity approaches and to achieve this, little darlings have a role to play.
READ ALSO>
Faced with Covid-19, Hong Kong assumes to tie children to their beds in isolation
"If it is shown that vaccines are safe and effective in children, vaccinating them could be interesting in order to reduce the circulation of the virus in this age group and not leave it capable of transmitting the virus to fragile people and unprotected, ”explains researcher Simon Cauchemez in our columns this week.
Taking an interest in the vaccination of children suggests a return to serenity in several ways.
It makes it possible to imagine a relaxation - partial or complete - of the sanitary measures in the months to come - at the earliest in the autumn.
However, this would imply vaccinating 60 to 69% of 0-64 year olds and 90% of over 65s: the vaccination rate must follow.
Another form of serenity concerns parents more, because vaccinating children could mean the end, once and for all, of home schooling.
Telework and distance school would be a distant memory, and sometimes painful, memory.
Is vaccinating children against Covid-19 safe?
For now, the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine is authorized for people 16 years of age and over, but phase 3 clinical trials have already taken place on 12-25 year olds, which allow partner laboratories to motivate their request for extension to this age group.
Morning essentials newsletter
A tour of the news to start the day
Subscribe to the newsletterAll newsletters
The results of these trials, carried out on 2,260 American adolescents, were published at the end of March.
They demonstrated "robust antibody responses" after the injections.
The vaccine was "well tolerated and the side effects were generally consistent with those seen" in people aged 16 to 25, Pfizer-BioNTech said Friday.
READ ALSO>
Young children produce more antibodies to Covid-19
The alliance of these two laboratories is not the only one to be interested in the vaccination of children.
In mid-March, the American company Moderna announced that it had started trials of its Covid-19 vaccine on thousands of children aged 6 months to 11 years.
Johnson & Johnson, the third vaccine authorized in the United States and very soon available in France, has also started trials in adolescents aged 12 to 17.
And in France ?
In France, the youngest will have to wait a little longer before receiving an injection.
If scientists here and there emerge the idea of vaccinating children, they have not yet been integrated into the country's vaccination strategy.
"The first priority of vaccination is to save lives," argues the Directorate General of Health.
The High Authority for Health has reviewed the risk factors for infection or serious forms and it appears in its opinion on the vaccination strategy that age is the factor most strongly associated with the risk of hospitalization or death. .
(...) Young people (...) rarely develop severe forms of Covid-19.
"
Young French people will have to wait at least a few months.
They could be eligible for vaccination once all the adults have been vaccinated, that is to say at the earliest at the end of the summer if one is based on the forecasts put forward by the President of the Republic.
By then, young Israelis will have stolen the show: since early February, 16-year-old Israelis are eligible for vaccination and Israel plans to expand its vaccination campaign to 12-15 year-olds starting in May.
Pfizer-BioNTech must then allow young Americans to follow suit.