According to new research done by researchers, the Covid vaccines have worked effectively in preventing severe outcomes in teens. The need for hospitalization was very less in vaccinated teens across the country.
Covid Vaccines Are Effective In Preventing Serious Outcomes
This is good news as the Omicron wave continues to surge across the country. Even though the new variant has invaded vaccine immunity, it has not caused major complications in most cases. The vaccines have prevented severe outcomes in most cases, and this has worked very well in children.
The protection avoided ICU care and life support by more than 98% among teens in the age group of 12 to 18. The report analyzed that close to 200 teens were hospitalized and needed ICU care in recent weeks.
But the interesting thing is that only two teens among them were vaccinated. When it comes to teens who needed oxygen support, none of them were vaccinated. The same pattern was seen among the seven dead people who were not having vaccine protection.
This clearly showed the effectiveness of Covid vaccines when it came to preventing severe outcomes during an infection. Other risk factors like social contacts were also analyzed as part of the study.
When the results were compared with those who did not contract the infection, it was found that more than 70% of the participants had attended in-person school. Many children had underlying health conditions like asthma and obesity.
This should motivate other parents to vaccinate their kids to get better protection from extreme symptoms even if they are infected in the future. As of now, children above the age of 5 are eligible to get the Covid vaccine in the US.
However, more than 50% of the teens across the country are yet to receive the Covid vaccines. There is still some amount of vaccine hesitancy among parents, and this should be removed at the earliest to reduce the burden on the health system.
The caseload across the country has been more than 500,000 daily for the past two weeks. Experts believe that we are yet to see the peak in this wave. The health system has to see some more pain for the next few months going by this situation.
The hospitalization numbers have broken the previous peak by a good margin. Even though Omicron is causing milder symptoms when compared to earlier variants, it is more transmissible than Delta.
Due to this reason, Omicron is infecting more people within a short duration of time. Most patients who are not yet vaccinated have reported moderate symptoms, and few need hospitalization.
Due to the sheer number of infections daily, more patients are getting admitted into hospitals. This has put a strain on the health system as many healthcare professionals are also infected in this wave.
Omicron has been able to invade vaccine immunity, and many people who have taken both doses of vaccines are also infected. However, the symptoms are mild, and most vaccinated people do not need hospital care. The CDC has instructed doctors and healthcare workers with moderate symptoms to resume work as hospitals face a shortage of trained staff in this situation.
Several other studies done on elderly patients have shown similar results on par with the study conducted on teens. The vaccines have prevented hospitalization and extreme outcomes by a good margin, even in the case of elders.
Going by these data, it is safe to say that the vaccines have done a good job by reducing hospitalizations and mortality rates by a decent margin. All these factors should help the authorities to boost the vaccination rate across the country.
