Unvaccinated children ages 5 to 11 were hospitalized with Covid twice as often as vaccinated children during the winter wave of Omicron variants, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday.
The study was the last to show that vaccines help keep children with Covid out of hospital, despite the injections losing some of their potential to stop infections from the Omicron variant.
But the CDC report, based on data from hospitals serving about 10 percent of the U.S. population in 14 states, also provided some of the strongest evidence to date that racial disparities in childhood vaccination may leave black children more exposed to serious illnesses through covid.
Black children aged 5 to 11 accounted for about a third of unvaccinated children in the study, the largest of any racial group, and accounted for about a third of total Covid-related hospital admissions within the age group.
2020 estimates based on census data suggest that about 14 percent of U.S. residents ages 5 to 11 were black children. But it’s not clear whether the areas covered in the CDC study are representative of the country’s population, making it difficult to precisely measure any differences.
“Raising vaccination rates among children, particularly among racial and ethnic minority groups disproportionately affected by Covid-19, is critical to avoiding Covid-19-associated hospitalization and serious outcomes,” the CDC study said.
The agency has not reported nationwide data on the race or ethnicity of vaccinated children, making it difficult for researchers to investigate gaps in protection.
Seven states and Washington, DC, report race data for vaccinated children ages 5 to 11. Black children were vaccinated at lower rates than white children in most, but not all, of those states, a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis released this month. found it. Asian children had the highest vaccination coverage, the analysis found, and Hispanic children were vaccinated at lower or comparable rates to white children.
Of all US residents, black people are less likely to remain vaccinated than whites, although the gap has narrowed over the course of the vaccination campaign.
Children are protected in much smaller numbers: Only about a third of children aged 5 to 11 have at least one vaccine dose, the lowest percentage of any age group. And the rate of vaccinations in that age group has fallen sharply in recent weeks.
The CDC study covered the period from mid-December to the end of February, during which approximately 400 children with Covid were hospitalized at the selected hospitals that participated in the study. Nearly 90 percent of them had not been vaccinated. The report said about a third of the children had no underlying medical conditions and a fifth were admitted to an intensive care unit.
Of the children who tested positive for the virus before or during their hospitalization, three-quarters of them were admitted primarily for Covid, rather than other illnesses, the CDC said.
The agency said that Omicron appeared to cause less severe illness in children than the Delta variant, as it did in adults, but that Omicron was so contagious, infecting so many children that they were hospitalized at higher rates during the Omicron peak. Hospitalized.
Infected children are much less likely to become seriously ill than adults. But because the youngest children (under age 5) are not yet eligible for vaccination and older children are vaccinated at much lower rates, children are generally slightly less protected against the virus than adults.