India mulls study on long-term impact of Covid-19 vaccines on children

India is commissioning a study for long-term surveillance of children less than 18 years who have received Covid-19 vaccine shots, said a senior government official.

The Immunization Technical Support Unit (ITSU) provides techno-managerial support to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare will conduct the study.

“There will be surveillance for children for the long term after they receive their Covid-19 vaccine shots. Cohorts will be assembled to follow them up for the long term — this could be five, 10, 15 years or more. There is a study in the offing for this purpose,” said NK Arora, chief of the Covid-19 working group of the National Technical Advisory Group of Immunisation (NTAGI).

Arora said the permission for such a study had been granted. The data generated is not for immediate use as such. “This is creating long-term data — if another pandemic strikes us tomorrow, we will have some ready databank to formulate policies,” he said.

For breakthrough infections, symptoms if the children get sick, how many get serious disease, which vaccine have they received, and what has been the trajectory of infections if they got any, any side-effects, etc are key epidemiological data that would help design policies for the future.

“At the moment, we have immunogenicity data on the vaccines that are given to children. This implies that we know that the vaccines induce the desired immune response once given. But, experts have been pointing out that there is a need to have a larger data bank to understand the implications of vaccinations, Covid-19 disease and design policies accordingly.

Gagandeep Kang, microbiologist and professor at CMC, Vellore, said: “We need to monitor how children respond to vaccines over time — let’s say we give it to a two-year old, and then will he/she need another dose at the age of 10? We have immunogenicity data on the available vaccines now. We need to create a database on outcomes in children. We need to monitor children we vaccinate for a period of time to track the incidences of disease in them.”

Covid-19 disease has typically affected adults. Children have not reported very serious disease cases, apart from those who had serious co-morbidities like cancer, other underlying ailments.

Kang said around 80 per cent sero-positivity had been reported in children. “If we look back, we know for sure that 80 per cent of India’s children did not get severely sick. When children get this infection, their immune system works to fight it, they are usually easily able to control infection well,” she added.

Therefore, this is the right time to create databanks for the future, experts felt.