According to Public Health Ontario, 38 children under five have been hospitalized with COVID over the past few weeks. There has been one recent death in a child under five.
Ontario hospitals are seeing a rise in the number of kids, including babies, hospitalized with COVID-19, leading four major hospitals to issue a joint plea for pregnant people to get vaccinated.
In response to the “disturbing, potential new trend” of infants admitted with COVID, the Hospital for Sick Children, CHEO (formerly the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario) in Ottawa, McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, and Kingston Health Sciences Centre, released a joint statement Wednesday calling for anyone who is pregnant to get their shots, to protect not only themselves but their babies through antibodies they pass on.
“Currently we are seeing the highest numbers of children being admitted with COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic,” said Dr. Anne Pham-Huy, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at CHEO. With such high community transmission, “a few (kids) will end up in the hospital, and that’s what we’re seeing,” she said.
According to Public Health Ontario, 38 children under five, including babies, have been hospitalized with COVID across Ontario over the past few weeks, and nine aged five to 11. There has been one recent death in a child under five.
There are nine children at CHEO with COVID and one in the ICU. There have also been four infants admitted in the past few weeks. None of their mothers had been vaccinated against COVID.
McMaster Children’s Hospital has also admitted more babies in recent weeks than in past pandemic waves, according to a joint press release from the four hospitals.
There’s now a lot of data that shows that moms who receive the vaccine during pregnancy “mount an excellent immune response,” said Pham-Huy. There are also several studies that show that their antibodies are then transferred to their babies “at a very good level,” that provides “some degree of protection” in the first few months of life.
One such study, published last fall in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology – Maternal Fetal Medicine, found high levels of COVID antibodies in cord blood from moms who’d received mRNA vaccines during pregnancy.
“If anyone was on the fence a couple months ago, I think Omicron has been a game-changer,” Pham-Huy said of the variant fueling the current COVID surge.
In a memo sent to local health units, and hospital CEOs on Tuesday, chief medical officer of health Dr. Kieran Moore asked clinics in primary and acute care to “prioritize appointments for pregnant women to facilitate the timely receipt of their booster vaccine due to the current epidemiology in the province.”
“We know that vaccine uptake among pregnant women is not as high as in other populations, despite their risk for severe illness if infected with COVID-19,” Moore added in his memo.
The Hospital for Sick Children has also seen an increase in admissions, with 14 pediatric COVID patients as of Wednesday, up from under five a month ago, said spokesperson Sarah Warr in an email. Six patients are four and under and eight are five and older. Fewer than five are in the ICU and the “majority” are not fully vaccinated or eligible for vaccination.
Dr. Steve Flindall, a York Region emergency room doctor, said he’s seen “a definite rise in the number of young children being infected,” with “easily triple” the number of kids coming in to the emergency room compared to previous waves. Now that children five and up are able to get the vaccine, it’s moved more into the younger kids and babies.
They often don’t need to be admitted, he said, with cold symptoms and fevers. But in infants under three months, that still means “a lot of intensive effort and a lot of suffering” to investigate, as these symptoms need to be taken seriously.
“It seems to be that kids are a little more susceptible to it, and also the fact that it is so contagious and they’re simply not vaccinated,” he said, adding they seem to have been infected at school (before it went remote), daycare, and gatherings where they are exposed to unvaccinated adults. Sometimes their own unvaccinated parents are giving them the disease.
In the United States, many hospitals are reporting a rise in kids with COVID. The American Academy of Pediatrics said Tuesday that COVID cases have reached the highest level ever in the pandemic. Over 325,000 child COVID-19 cases were reported for the week ending Dec. 30, a 64 per cent increase over the previous week’s total and almost double that of two weeks ago.
Dr. Anna Banerji, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, said it’s clear from reports out of the U.S. that the sickest children are “almost all unvaccinated,” and getting them the shots, if eligible, is “how you prevent the kids from getting so seriously ill.”
The U.S. has had higher rates of COVID in general throughout the pandemic, she noted, as many regions have lower vaccination rates than Ontario and don’t have mask mandates. But this should serve as a wake-up call for parents who have been hesitant about getting their kids the shots.
In general, adult hospitalizations for COVID in Ontario are also rising. Kids aged five to 12 are now eligible for shots, and about 44 per cent have had at least one dose. Pfizer reported in mid-December that it was going to test three doses of its vaccines in kids under five as two doses did not seem to work as well as they’d hoped.
The good news is that, so far, the kids at the Hospital for Sick Children, in general, are experiencing mild illness and have been admitted for management of symptoms such as fever and dehydration, said Warr.
A survey of GTA hospitals found many reporting increases in kids hospitalized with COVID, but overall numbers are still low.
At North York General Hospital, there has also been an increase in pediatric admissions for COVID-19, but it has been “manageable” so far, with less than half-a-dozen over the past week, said Dr. Ronik Kanani, NYGH’s chief of pediatrics, in an email.
“Our current pediatric COVID patients tend to have mild illness including fevers. Across all age groups, people who are vaccinated have much milder symptoms than those who are unvaccinated and undervaccinated,” he added.
“We strongly recommend that parents vaccinate their children.”
There are also increases in pediatric COVID patients, compared to previous waves, at St. Joseph’s Health Centre, and at William Osler Health System, which includes both Brampton Civic and Etobicoke General hospitals, according to spokespeople.
Dr. Tali Bogler, chair of family medicine obstetrics at St. Michael’s Hospital, said it’s important to know if the 38 kids and infants recently hospitalized in the province are there because they have severe COVID, or if they are in hospital for something else and tested positive.
It would also be good to break the data down even further in terms of age. But if more infants are in hospital with COVID province-wide, “that’s concerning, because this could be preventable from vaccines in pregnancy,” she said.
Article From: The Star
Author: May Warren
