Editorial: Keiki vaccines could help us all

As more Hawaii residents get the COVID-19 vaccine to protect themselves against the dangerous delta variant, a significant group remains vulnerable — and not by choice.

Children under the age of 12 remain ineligible to get the shots that could protect their lives and those around them. It’s a big gap: more than 100,000 keiki. Vaccinating them would be a major step forward in tamping down the virus and getting us closer to normalcy.

Thankfully, that could happen relatively soon. On Monday, Pfizer-BioNTech announced the results of a vaccine trial involving more than 2,200 children ages 5-11. The drug companies said its vaccine, already received by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, was safe and elicited “robust neutralizing antibody responses” among the children. The dose was one-third the amount given to adults and teens, but immune response was similar.

The companies submitted the data to the Food and Drug Administration, which could authorize its use for the 5-11 age group in a matter of weeks, barring any surprises. The world is waiting.

Nationally, more than 5.7 million children have tested positive for COVID-19. On the mainland, the number of new cases remains “exceptionally high,” according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Since the pandemic began, children represented 16% of total cumulated cases. But in the week of Sept. 23, children were making up 26.7% of weekly cases, the AAP said.

In Hawaii, more children are getting COVID-19, but not out of proportion with the total number of cases. Still, it’s concerning.

“We’ve seen as far back as July, before our case counts really started escalating, about 22% of the cases per day were in the pediatric population,” said Dr. Elizabeth Char, director of the state Department of Health, on the Star-Advertiser’s Spotlight webcast last week. “That’s held remarkably steady even through the big spike in numbers.”

More worrisome is what’s happening in mainland hospitals.

“We’re hearing about a lot of pediatric hospitalizations and some really, really sick children,” Char said. “Thankfully, I’m not seeing that level of hospitalization here in our state.”

Well, not so far. But the fact that it’s happening elsewhere should put us on high alert. The virus is still unpredictable and evolving, and the low-dose vaccine for youngsters will be a key part of our defense. But how key? That will depend a lot on parents.

A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that “parents of younger children remain cautious about vaccinating their children against COVID-19, with almost three quarters (73%) saying they will either wait and see, will only do so if required by school, or won’t do so at all.”

An AAP survey of 1,745 parents found that fewer than half of them are likely to have their children receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

Such parental caution is understandable. It’s only natural to be careful, especially with a new vaccine treatment for young children, one that hasn’t been widely used. Also, young children seem less prone to serious illness from the virus, so parents may be less inclined to get them the shot.

Even so, the best evidence so far has shown the health risks from the vaccine are far lower — rare, in fact — than the risks from the delta variant, which are both well known and, frankly, scary.

Once the vaccine becomes available, parents should consult their pediatricians and review the recommendations of trusted medical experts.

While we wait, however, there is something we can do to improve the odds for our keiki.

“We as adults and as parents and as neighbors and community, we should be getting vaccinated so that we create a bubble around those young ones who can’t yet get vaccinated,” Char said. “And that’s going to be the best way we can protect them.”