Kids are going back to school in Eureka Springs August 16 amid the middle of a surge of a Covid-19 variant, BA.5, that has shown the ability to cause symptomatic infections even in people vaccinated and boosted, and those who have had prior infections.
“Schools are transmission sites for many respiratory illnesses whether flu, the common cold and, obviously, Covid-19,” Dr. Joe Thompson said in a phone interview. Thompson is a pediatrician and President/CEO of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement. “We are all in this together. We need to do everything we can to prevent the spread of Covid in the schools.”
The BA.5 variant is more infectious than previous variants and comes at a time when many people are weary of pandemic restrictions. Entering the third school year with Covid-19 in the picture, there is less reliable information about the number of people infected because of widespread use of home tests, combined with people who either don’t have symptoms or don’t test. The government is collecting less data.
Thompson said the ability of the present variants to escape the protection of previous vaccinations and infections is being seen across all age groups.
“However, those who have been boosted have far fewer serious illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths,” Thompson said. “Vaccinations still prevent the worst outcomes. Schools need to do everything they can, including providing good ventilation and sanitation. Parents need to make sure they don’t send kids to school if they are sick. And if teachers want to wear face shields or masks to protect themselves, we should support them in their efforts, also.”
It has been widely publicized that vaccine uptake has been lower the younger the children are. Those aged six months to five years are now eligible but, as of mid-July, only 2.8 percent of children in that age group had been vaccinated in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For children 5 to 11, who were approved for vaccination earlier, CDC estimated only about 17 percent have been vaccinated.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends Covid-19 vaccination for all children and adolescents 6 months of age and older who do not have contraindications using a vaccine authorized for use for their age. Some parents say they feel the risks of vaccination are greater than catching Covid. But Thompson points out that of 20 children hospitalized with Covid-19 recently at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the overwhelming majority had not been vaccinated.
“As a parent thinking about vaccinating their children, they need to do a risk assessment, not just for the child, but the family,” Thompson said. “If there is an adult at risk, if grandpa or grandma are living is with you, there are other family members at risk, or the child has chronic conditions that make it harder to fight off the virus, the benefits of the vaccinations go up. If you have someone in the family who is at risk, you want to safeguard them from the worst outcomes. Kids are not seeing many side effects with the vaccine.”
The Arkansas Department of Health estimate August 1 there were about 16,000 active cases of Covid in the state, and 132 in Carroll County. Thompson said those figures don’t accurately represent the current number of cases.
“The only solid indicator is the number of hospitalizations,” Thompson said. “That is going up, although not at the rate we saw in the earlier omicron surge, and with the delta variant and the parent variant. Our hospitalizations and daily death numbers are both slowly creeping up. We have been seeing ten to 12 deaths per day recently, and most of those were likely preventable with vaccinations.”
While the legislature banned public schools from requiring masks, that was overturned in the courts, and it is now a local decision whether to require masks. Thompson said he thinks it would be politically challenging for school boards to require masks right now with this less dangerous variant.
“If we get a new variant that is more deadly, some of those more restrictive control mechanisms could be revisited,” Thompson said. “I think with this variant, what will be important is to use our common-sense defenses: good handwashing, good ventilation, keeping kids home if they have symptoms, and using home testing to ascertain if someone has been exposed and infected.
“I would encourage parents to revisit not only their child’s Covid vaccinations, but kids who have fallen behind on other vaccinations for diseases like whooping cough and measles. The next few weeks are a good time to revisit protections put in place for children. Parents should call their physician’s office to find out if their child is up to date on all the vaccinations.”
About 58 percent of those five and older in Arkansas have been vaccinated, indicating considerable distrust of the vaccines. Some people opposed to Covid vaccination have said only vaccinated people are getting the current variant. Thompson said there is no support for that statement; hospitals are reporting a majority of those hospitalized are not vaccinated.
He urges people to consider that between ten to 30 percent of those infected will have long Covid symptoms.
“I think most of those with long Covid would prefer not to have long Covid,” Thompson said.
This fall, perhaps as early as September, new bivalent vaccines are expected to provide better protection against recent variants. Thompson refers to this as a double barrel shotgun instead of a single barrel shotgun.
“That will provide better protection, but we continue to have individuals who don’t see the value of protecting themselves and they will continue to be at risk for the most severe outcomes,” Thompson said. “It is becoming rarer that someone has not been infected because the virus continues to mutate. We are still in a fight with the virus. I know everyone is tired of it, but we need to continue being aware and take precautions where we need to.”