Children and COVID-19 Research Library

While COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe, diligent efforts are made to understand its attributes and dynamics to help develop treatment and prevention measures. The paradox pertaining to children being the least affected by severe illness poses exciting opportunities to investigate potential protective factors. The Hypothesis of  this paper is that childhood vaccination against pertussis (whooping cough) might play a non-specific protective role against COVID-19 through heterologous adaptive responses in this young population. Pertussis is a vaccine-preventable infectious disease of the respiratory tract and it shares many similarities with COVID-19 including transmission and clinical features. Although pertussis is caused by a bacterium (Bordetella pertussis) while COVID-19 is a viral infection (SARS-CoV-2), previous data showed that cross-reactivity and heterologous adaptive responses can be seen with unrelated agents of highly divergent groups, such as between bacteria and viruses.

The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) has disrupted immunization programs around the globe, potentially increasing life‐threatening vaccine‐preventable diseases. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries, which are still struggling to eradicate wild poliovirus. All vaccination campaigns in Pakistan were suspended in April due to the COVID‐19 outbreak, leading 40 million children to miss out on polio vaccination. Like the climate crisis, the COVID‐19 pandemic could be regarded as a child‐rights crisis because it could have life‐threatening impact over children, who need immunization, now and in the long‐term.

Pneumonia and diarrhea are leading killers of children under the age of five, claiming the lives of more young children globally than any other infectious disease. The impacts of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic aggravate these heath risks. International Vaccine Access Center's (IVAC) annual Pneumonia & Diarrhea Progress Report evaluates the progress across 10 high-impact indicators outlined in the Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia and Diarrhea (GAPPD) in the 15 countries with the greatest burden of under-five pneumonia and diarrhea deaths.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has taken an unprecedented global toll and vaccination is needed to restore healthy living. Timely inclusion of children in vaccination trials is critical. This study surveyed caregivers of children seeking care in 17 Emergency Departments (ED) across 6 countries during the peak of the pandemic to identify factors associated with intent to participate in COVID-19 vaccine trials. Questions about child and parent characteristics, COVID-19 expressed concerns and parental attitudes toward participation in a trial were asked.

The development of COVID-19 vaccines is occurring at a rapid pace, with the potential for a vaccine to be available within 6 months. So who should be prioritized for vaccination when in the first instance, there will be insufficient supply to meet demand? There is no doubt that health-care workers in all settings should be vaccinated first, but who comes next will be a complex decision based on local epidemiology, societal values, and the ability of the vaccines to prevent both severe disease and to reduce transmission thereby eliciting herd protection. The decision on who to vaccinate should be equitable, highly contextualized, and based on the property of each vaccine. In some settings, the elderly may be prioritized, in others, it may be the population most likely to get infected and responsible for community spread. To support decision-making on who to be prioritized for vaccination requires urgent additional research on the epidemiology of COVID-19; preexisting immunity and who is responsible for transmission in a variety of settings; the safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines in children and pregnant women; and determining whether COVID-19 vaccines prevent asymptomatic infection and transmission.

The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting national and international public health. Routine childhood immunization may be adversely affected by COVID-19 mitigation measures. This study aims to identify the prevalence of delayed immunization and explore the reasons and barriers for delayed immunization during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Qassim region, Saudi Arabia.

Inequity in routine childhood vaccination coverage is well researched. Pandemics disrupt infrastructure and divert health resources from preventive care, including vaccination programmes, leading to increased vaccine preventable morbidity and mortality. COVID-19 control measures have resulted in coverage reductions. We conducted a rapid review of the impact of pandemics on existing inequities in routine vaccination coverage. PICO search framework: Population: children 0–18 years; Intervention/exposure: pandemic/epidemic; Comparison: inequality; Outcome: routine vaccination coverage. The review demonstrates a gap in the literature as none of the 29 papers selected for full-paper review from 1973 abstracts identified from searches met the inclusion criteria.

This study aimed to assess Italian parents' views on how the COVID‐19 pandemic will affect key issues over the autumn and winter, including school attendance, vaccination and drug strategies and the use of telemedicine.

The COVID-19 pandemic threatens to set back major successes that have been achieved in global vaccine initiatives. This is a rapid review and synthesis of the literature on immunization provision and utilization since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 11 papers comprising peer-reviewed articles and key policies and guidelines, published between January 1 and June 15, 2020, were analyzed. Widespread disruptions of routine immunization and vaccination campaigns were reported leaving millions of children worldwide at risk of measles outbreaks. It is also presented an expanded model of the World Health Organization’s Global Routine Immunization Strategic Plan (GRISP) action areas as a tool to help countries quickly adapt to immunization challenges in the presence of COVID-19 and close the emerging immunization coverage gaps.

The zeal to develop and implement a vaccine to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection has been exceptional. Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's proposal, seeks to produce hundreds of millions of doses of a vaccine by January 2021. Recent polls show as many as 70% of adults in the United States plan to get vaccinated against COVID-19 once a vaccine is available. And thousands of adults have registered to participate as volunteers in human challenge trills to speed up the development of a new vaccine. We anticipate that this fervor will eventually lead to discussions about making a COVID-19 vaccine mandatory. An obvious group to target for mandatory vaccination is children. Not only do we already mandate several vaccines for them to attend school, but strategies to reopen schools or keep them open may be predicated on it.

The immunization of children is stalling, and maintaining coverage is becoming challenging, with almost 20 million children being unvaccinated or under-vaccinated in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted immunization coverage, yielding a stagnant coverage rate. Currently, there is a dire need for a collaborative approach between global and national organizations to revive disrupted vaccination rates.

Polio is a deadly viral disease that has been paralyzing many children in Afghanistan. Despite fundamental efforts, primarily vaccination, to reduce the number of cases in Afghanistan, there are still many children who are deprived of the vaccine every year. Afghanistan is one of the two remaining countries endemic for polio, and the country has undergone various challenges that have hampered the eradication of this disease. The underlying challenges include inaccessibility of unsecured areas, illiteracy, refusal, and, most recently, COVID-19. The country is in the midst of a battle against COVID-19, and polio has almost entirely been neglected.

Coronavirus-related service disruptions threaten to reverse the decade-long progress made for children and pregnant women in the fight against HIV.