This article appeared in Crain’s Detroit Business. Read more here.
COVID-19 hospitalizations are rising among babies under 6 months old, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging mothers to get vaccinated to reduce the risk of infection in those not yet eligible for shots, Director Rochelle Walensky said.
“We’re seeing more and more of those younger babies getting hospitalized,” Walensky said in an exclusive interview at CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta. “That’s really where we’re trying to do some work now because we think we can prevent those by getting mom vaccinated.”
Walensky, who just recovered from a COVID-19 infection and subsequent rebound, spoke in advance of the release of an agency report on the outbreak in infants. She didn’t cite figures from the study. While some adults, especially those 65 and older and people with weak immune systems, remain at high risk of severe COVID, they can get vaccinated, unlike the very youngest patients.
Publicly available CDC data show hospitalizations of children under 5 years of age have remained persistent throughout the pandemic, rising during big waves of the virus. In the week ending Oct. 29, 46 children under 5 were hospitalized with COVID-19, the CDC said, more than double the number of kids aged 5 to 17.
A recent study from Pfizer Inc. suggested that vaccinating pregnant people against respiratory syncytial virus, another lung disease that threatens young children, can protect their newborns from infection. Emerging data suggest the same dynamic with COVID vaccination.
“We know that those antibodies will transfer to the baby,” Walensky said. “It’ll actually help protect the infant.”CDC is preparing to encourage pregnant people to receive the bivalent vaccine that protects against two widespread strains of the highly infectious omicron strain, BA.4 and BA.5. Current rates of uptake with the bivalent booster are low in all adults. She also wants to continue to encourage the vaccination of all eligible children.
“We have seen relatively low vaccination rates in our 6 months to 5-year-olds, even our 5-to-11 and our 12- to 17-year-olds,” she said. “One of the most important things that you can do is to get your children vaccinated.”