COVID‐19 vaccination in children as a global dilemma through an ethical lens: A retrospective review

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Abstract

Background and Aims

COVID‐19 pandemic led to a need to rapidly vaccinate as many people as possible. Children are an important part of the population with different characteristics which vaccinating them is a matter of great importance as it should be decided considering all aspects and ethics. Here, we present different aspects of COVID vaccination in children including the potential challenges.

Methods

We searched on PubMed, Google Scholar and Scopus in this regard, and all of the relevant papers published until June 28, 2021 were included if we could access their full‐texts.

Results

We found various expert opinions in this regard and tried to summarized them. Saving lives has similar ethical value as preventing evitable adverse event. Accordingly, mandating the children to receive the SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccine, needs risk‐benefit weighing with special consideration of ethical challenges.

Conclusion

Considering the vast range of benefits resulted from pediatric vaccination both for the children and the community, implementing the program in a scientific manner and also with the least financial expenses for the families seems to be reasonable and makes it both ethical and moral.

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Understanding vaccine hesitancy around vaccines and vaccination from a global perspective: a systematic review of published literature, 2007-2012.

Heidi Larson, Caitlin Jarrett, Elisabeth Eckersberger … (2014)

Vaccine "hesitancy" is an emerging term in the literature and discourse on vaccine decision-making and determinants of vaccine acceptance. It recognizes a continuum between the domains of vaccine acceptance and vaccine refusal and de-polarizes previous characterization of individuals and groups as either anti-vaccine or pro-vaccine. The primary aims of this systematic review are to: 1) identify research on vaccine hesitancy; 2) identify determinants of vaccine hesitancy in different settings including its context-specific causes, its expression and its impact; and 3) inform the development of a model for assessing determinants of vaccine hesitancy in different settings as proposed by the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts Working Group (SAGE WG) for dealing with vaccine hesitancy. A broad search strategy, built to capture multiple dimensions of public trust, confidence and hesitancy around vaccines, was applied across multiple databases. Peer-reviewed studies were selected for inclusion if they focused on childhood vaccines [≤ 7 years of age], used multivariate analyses, and were published between January 2007 and November 2012. Our results show a variety of factors as being associated with vaccine hesitancy but they do not allow for a complete classification and confirmation of their independent and relative strength of influence. Determinants of vaccine hesitancy are complex and context-specific - varying across time, place and vaccines. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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What defines an efficacious COVID-19 vaccine? A review of the challenges assessing the clinical efficacy of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2

Susanne Hodgson, Kushal Mansatta, Garry Mallett … (2020)

The novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has caused more than 1 million deaths in the first 6 months of the pandemic and huge economic and social upheaval internationally. An efficacious vaccine is essential to prevent further morbidity and mortality. Although some countries might deploy COVID-19 vaccines on the strength of safety and immunogenicity data alone, the goal of vaccine development is to gain direct evidence of vaccine efficacy in protecting humans against SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 so that manufacture of efficacious vaccines can be selectively upscaled. A candidate vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 might act against infection, disease, or transmission, and a vaccine capable of reducing any of these elements could contribute to disease control. However, the most important efficacy endpoint, protection against severe disease and death, is difficult to assess in phase 3 clinical trials. In this Review, we explore the challenges in assessing the efficacy of candidate SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, discuss the caveats needed to interpret reported efficacy endpoints, and provide insight into answering the seemingly simple question, “Does this COVID-19 vaccine work?”

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Author and article information

Contributors

Zeinab Aryanian: z_aryanian@yahoo.com

Zeinab M. Afshar: z_moseni2001@yahoo.com

Parvaneh Hatami:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3531-2907

p_hatami2001@yahoo.com

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Health Sci Rep

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Health Sci Rep

Journal ID (doi): 10.1002/(ISSN)2398-8835

Journal ID (publisher-id): HSR2

Title: Health Science Reports

Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Inc. (Hoboken )

ISSN (Electronic): 2398-8835

Publication date (Electronic): 03 December 2022

Publication date Collection: January 2023

Volume: 6

Issue: 1 ( doiID: 10.1002/hsr2.v6.1 )

Electronic Location Identifier: e976

Affiliations

[ ¹ ] Department of Medical Ethics Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences Tehran Iran

[ ² ] Health Research Institute Babol University of Medical Sciences Babol Iran

[ ³ ] Department of Medical Ethics, Faculty of Medicine/Medical Ethics and History of Medicine Research Center Tehran University of Medical Sciences Tehran Iran

[ ⁴ ] Autoimmune Bullous Diseases Research Center Tehran University of Medical Sciences Tehran Iran

[ ⁵ ] Department of Dermatology Babol University of Medical Sciences Babol Iran

[ ⁶ ] Clinical Research Development Center, Imam Reza, Hospital, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences Kermanshah Iran

Author notes

[*] [* ] Correspondence Zeinab M. Afshar, Clinical Research Development Center, Imam Reza, Hospital, Kermanshah, University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah 9137913316, Iran.

Email: z_moseni2001@ 123456yahoo.com

Zeinab Aryanian and Parvaneh Hatami, Autoimmune Bullous Diseases Research Center, Razi hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 1199663911, Iran.

Email: z_aryanian@ 123456yahoo.com and p_hatami2001@ 123456yahoo.com

Author information

Parvaneh Hatami http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3531-2907

Article

Publisher ID: HSR2976

DOI: 10.1002/hsr2.976

PMC ID: 9719287

SO-VID: c95d8a3f-47dc-4286-8de1-20621a6d1fcc

License:

This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

History

Date revision received : 17 November 2022

Date received : 04 May 2022

Date accepted : 20 November 2022

Page count

Figures: 0, Tables: 0, Pages: 7, Words: 5513

Custom metadata

source-schema-version-number 2.0

cover-date January 2023

details-of-publishers-convertor Converter:WILEY_ML3GV2_TO_JATSPMC version:6.2.1 mode:remove_FC converted:03.12.2022

Keywords: covid‐19 vaccine,ethical issues,moral issues,pediatric population

Data availability:

Keywords: covid‐19 vaccine, ethical issues, moral issues, pediatric population