Daily Dose: Vaccination Reduces Risk of Long COVID in Children

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Patient Care brings primary care clinicians a lot of medical news every day—it’s easy to miss an important study. The Daily Dose provides a concise summary of one of the website's leading stories you may not have seen.

Last week, we reported on findings from a study published in Pediatrics that examined vaccine effectiveness (VE) against long COVID in children aged 5-17 years.

The study

Researchers analyzed electronic health record data from 17 health systems in the RECOVER PCORnet program to assess vaccine effectiveness against long COVID in 2 groups of patients—aged 5-11 years and 12-17 years—as well as the time period in which patients were impacted. They adjusted for sex, ethnicity, health system, comorbidity burden, and pre-exposure health care utilization. They examined diagnosed long COVID as well as probable, or symptom-based long COVID, in the year following participant’s vaccination.

The cohort totaled 1 037 936 children, with 480 498 children in group 1 (aged 5-11 years) and 719 519 adolescents in group 2 (aged 12-17 years). Overall, 55% received at least 1 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, and 84% of vaccinated participants received ≥2 doses.

The findings

Results showed that the incidence of probable long COVID in the cohort was 4.5% and the incidence of diagnosed long COVID was 0.7%. Investigators estimated that vaccine effectiveness within 12 months against long COVID was 35.4% among children with probable long COVID and 41.7% among those diagnosed with long COVID.

Investigators found that vaccine effectiveness was higher for adolescents aged 12-17 years (50.3%) than children aged 5-11 years (23.8%), and higher at 6 months (61.4%) than at 18 months (10.6%).

Authors' comment

"Our results provide substantial evidence in a large and diverse cohort of children receiving health care for protective effect in children 5 years and older. This study adds to the growing body of knowledge about mitigating effect of vaccines on COVID-19, while demonstrating the need for further research utilizing a range of designs to examine the protective effect of these vaccines against subsequent strains and to help guide vaccine policy."

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