After a winter marked by numerous transfers of young patients to pediatric wards, the authority believes that vaccinating the youngest will reduce the pressure on hospital wards.
In a communicated published this Thursday, the High Authority for Health (HAS) indicated that it recommends vaccination against influenza in all children aged 2 to 17 years. A decision that comes as the flu epidemic is gaining momentum in France, after a relative lull in January. Currently, all metropolitan regions, with the exception of Normandy and Hauts-de-France, are in the epidemic phase.
Vaccination against influenza was previously recommended only for people over 65, those with comorbidity and pregnant women. An audience that the HAS has therefore decided to expand, after being seized by the Directorate General of Health. But how does the authority justify this decision?
• Protect children
Vaccinating children against the flu is first and foremost about protecting them. Although the disease mainly presents risks in the elderly, children are not immune to complications if we are to believe the figures transmitted this Thursday by the HAS.
“Children under the age of 15, and more particularly those aged 2 to 5, are overrepresented among the cases of flu syndrome seen in city medicine consultation”, details the authority.
Children under 2 years old represent 9% of patients who consult for flu syndrome, while they weigh only 2% in the general population. For 2-5 year olds, this difference is even greater: they represent only 5% of the population, but 19% of consultations in city medicine.
Finally, in its latest epidemiological bulletin relating to influenza published on Wednesday, Public Health France noted “a sharp increase in the number of visits to the emergency room for influenza or flu-like syndrome and the number of hospitalizations after passage; this trend was observed in all classes age and particularly marked among 15-44 year olds (+93%)”.
There are five vaccines against influenza in children available in France, and “show good efficacy and tolerance (…) against influenza in children aged 2 to 17”, indicates the HAS.
• Relieve congestion in pediatric hospital services
Protecting children against the flu will also relieve congestion in pediatric services, assures the High Authority for Health, which have been put to the test this winter. Facing a triple epidemic – of influenza, but also of Covid-19 and bronchiolitis – several hospitals resigned themselves to transferring several very young patients to another department in December.
“This vaccination would reduce the burden of influenza in pediatric departments,” says the HAS.
Especially since, as for city medicine, the youngest are overrepresented in emergency visits for flu syndrome. For example, 2-5 year olds represent 23% of visits to the emergency room for flu-like illness, whereas they represent only 5% of the population.
• Protect vulnerable groups
Finally, vaccinating children against the flu will protect their elders.
“The HAS estimates that this vaccination in children aged 2 to 17 – who constitute the reservoir of influenza – would limit the spread of the disease within the population and the elderly”, underlines the press release.
According the Pasteur Institute, schools are thus part of the places that favor “the dissemination of the flu virus”. This same argument had already been mobilized at the height of the Covid-19 epidemic, to justify the opening of vaccination to the youngest.
To generalize vaccination among the youngest, the High Authority for Health “underlines the need for reimbursement of seasonal flu vaccines for children aged 2 to 17”, and puts forward “a preferential recommendation for the intranasal vaccine “because it is easier to administer in the youngest.
