Barely a month after the Food and Drug Administration authorized Covid-19 vaccines for very young children, the outlook for large numbers of them getting the shots looks bleak, according to a new survey of parents published Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. which has monitored vaccine attitudes throughout the pandemic.
Most parents surveyed said they considered the vaccine a greater risk to their children than the coronavirus itself.
For children in the age group, 6 months to 4 years, parental apprehension has resulted in the administration of almost a flurry of Covid vaccinations so far. As of June 18, when they became eligible, only 2.8 percent of those children had received vaccines, the foundation recently found in a separate analysis of federal vaccine data. In comparison, 18.5 percent of children aged 5 to 11, who were eligible for Covid vaccines since October, had been vaccinated at a similar time in the launch of their vaccines.
The new survey found that 43 percent of parents with children under 5 said they would “definitely not” vaccinate them. About 27 percent said they would “wait and see,” while another 13 percent said they would get their children vaccinated “only if necessary.” Even some parents who were vaccinated against Covid said they would not give permission to their younger children.
The new analysis of parents’ views comes as uptake of the vaccine for older children has slowed markedly. So far, only 40% of children aged 5 to 11 have been vaccinated. In the new survey, 37 percent of parents said they would “definitely not” get a Covid vaccine for their child in this age group.
The parents’ main concerns were about the potential side effects of the vaccine, its relative newness, and what they felt was a lack of sufficient research. Many parents said they were willing to let their children risk getting Covid rather than get vaccinated to prevent it.
Child vaccination experts said they were alarmed by parents’ hesitancy, coming at a time when Covid cases are rising again and are expected to worsen in the cold months, and as the possibility of new, potentially more dangerous variants of the coronavirus.
While the vast majority of children who get Covid get over it easily, “some kids get very, very sick and some die,” said Patricia A. Stinchfield, president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. She did not participate in the Kaiser study.
How a child with Covid will fare is unpredictable, added Ms. Stinchfield, a nurse who coordinated vaccine administration for Children’s Minnesota, a children’s hospital system in St. Paul and Minneapolis. “We don’t have a marker for that,” he said. “Half the kids who get severe Covid are healthy kids with no underlying conditions. So the idea of saying, ‘I’m going to skip this vaccine for my child, we’re not worried about Covid’ is really taking a risk “.
Dr. Jason V. Terk, a pediatrician in Keller, Texas, acknowledged “the reality” that the highly contagious BA.5 subvariant of Omicron “is evading both natural immunity and vaccination immunity much more than other variants.” Still, he said: “The vaccine is the best way to protect younger children from the times when Covid-19 causes more serious illness.”
This latest report is based on an online and telephone survey July 7-17 of 1,847 adults, 471 of whom had a child under 5. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full sample, plus or minus. 8 percentage points for parents with a child under the age of 5.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the partisan divide was particularly sharp when it came to vaccinating children, with Republican parents three times more likely than Democratic parents to say they would “definitely not” vaccinate their child.
Most parents said they found the federal government’s vaccine information for their children confusing. However, 70 percent said they had not yet discussed the shots with a pediatrician. Only 27 percent of parents who are considering the vaccine said they would make an appointment to have that conversation.
“We would see much greater uptake for all ages if every child had a visit with a trusted pediatrician or family doctor who recommended the vaccine and had it in stock to administer,” said Dr. Sean T. O’Leary, of Colorado. pediatrician who is chairman of the committee on infectious diseases of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“I recognize that not every child in America has a medical home,” he added, “but there are public health departments, federal health clinics and rural health centers across America that are trying to meet those needs.”
Parents who might be predisposed to have their children receive the Covid vaccine said lack of access was a major barrier, a concern expressed by more black and Hispanic parents than white parents. About 44 percent of black parents worried about having to take time off work to vaccinate their children or to care for them if the children had side effects. Among Hispanic parents of young children, 45 percent said they were worried about finding a trusted place to take the shots, and about a third feared they would have to pay a fee.
Ms. Stinchfield said he understood her concerns: Her own daughter had to go to work to vaccinate Mrs. Stinchfield, 1 and 3 years old. Ms. Stinchfield went to a clinic with them. “The message to the clinics is that the vaccine for children is available at night and on weekends,” he said.
Did your grandchildren have any side effects? No, said Mrs. Stinchfield with a laugh. “They felt so good that we put them in a little wading pool,” he said. “And now my granddaughter has a tan line from the band-aid shot on her leg.”