Impact of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination of children ages 5–11 years on COVID-19 disease burden and resilience to new variants in the United States, November 2021–March 2022: A multi-model study
Background
The COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub convened nine modeling teams to project the impact of expanding SARS-CoV-2 vaccination to children aged 5–11 years on COVID-19 burden and resilience against variant strains.
Methods
Teams contributed state- and national-level weekly projections of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the United States from September 12, 2021 to March 12, 2022. Four scenarios covered all combinations of 1) vaccination (or not) of children aged 5–11 years (starting November 1, 2021), and 2) emergence (or not) of a variant more transmissible than the Delta variant (emerging November 15, 2021). Individual team projections were linearly pooled. The effect of childhood vaccination on overall and age-specific outcomes was estimated using meta-analyses.
Findings
Assuming that a new variant would not emerge, all-age COVID-19 outcomes were projected to decrease nationally through mid-March 2022. In this setting, vaccination of children 5–11 years old was associated with reductions in projections for all-age cumulative cases (7.2%, mean incidence ratio [IR] 0.928, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.880–0.977), hospitalizations (8.7%, mean IR 0.913, 95% CI 0.834–0.992), and deaths (9.2%, mean IR 0.908, 95% CI 0.797–1.020) compared with scenarios without childhood vaccination. Vaccine benefits increased for scenarios including a hypothesized more transmissible variant, assuming similar vaccine effectiveness. Projected relative reductions in cumulative outcomes were larger for children than for the entire population. State-level variation was observed.
Interpretation
Given the scenario assumptions (defined before the emergence of Omicron), expanding vaccination to children 5–11 years old would provide measurable direct benefits, as well as indirect benefits to the all-age U.S. population, including resilience to more transmissible variants.
Funding
Various (see acknowledgments).
Citation Information
| Publication Year | 2023 |
|---|---|
| Title | Impact of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination of children ages 5–11 years on COVID-19 disease burden and resilience to new variants in the United States, November 2021–March 2022: A multi-model study |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.lana.2022.100398 |
| Authors | Rebecca K. Borchering, Luke C Mullany, Emily Howerton, Matteo Chinazzi, Claire P. Smith, Michelle Qin, Nicholas G. Reich, Lucie Contamin, John Levander, J. Kerr, J. Espino, Harry Hochheiser, Kaitlin Lovett, Matt Kinsey, Kate Tallaksen, Shelby Wilson, Lauren Shin, Joseph Lemaitre, Juan Dent Hulse, Joshua Kaminsky, Elizabeth C. Lee, Alison Hill, Jessica Davis, Kunpeng Mu, Xinyue Xiong, Ana Pastore y Piontti, Alessandro Vespignani, Ajitesh Srivastava, Przemyslaw Porebski, Srini Venkatramanan, Aniruddha Adiga, Bryan Lewis, Brian Klahn, Joseph Outten, Benjamin Hurt, Jiangzhuo Chen, Henning Mortveit, Amanda Wilson, Madhav Marathe, Stefan Hoops, Parantapa Bhattacharya, Dustin Machi, Shi Chen, Rajib Paul, Daniel Janies, Jean-Claude Thill, Marta Galanti, Teresa Yamana, Sen Pei, Jeffrey L. Shaman, Guido España, Sean Cavany, Sean Moore, Alex Perkins, Jessica Healy, Rachel B. Slayton, Michael A Johansson, Matthew Biggerstaff, Katriona Shea, Shaun Truelove, Michael C. Runge, Cecile Viboud, Justin Lessler |
| Publication Type | Article |
| Publication Subtype | Journal Article |
| Series Title | The Lancet Regional Health - Americas |
| Index ID | 70242079 |
| Record Source | USGS Publications Warehouse |
| USGS Organization | Eastern Ecological Science Center |