In children younger than 5 years, receipt of 2 or 3 doses of wild-type BNT162b2 vaccine was associated with a reduced risk of emergency department (ED), urgent care (UC), and outpatient visits for COVID-19, researchers report. Previously, a single study included children as young as 3 years of age, and it did not include outcomes on the need for medical attention. This COVID-19 vaccine was recommended in June 2022 for children aged 6 months through 4 years.
This test-negative case-control study included 24,261 patients aged 6 months through 4 years seen at Kaiser Permanente Southern California (KPSC) and diagnosed with acute respiratory infection (ARI). Results for cases (people with a positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR test result) and controls (negative test results and no evidence of a test result positive for SARS-CoV-2 in the past 90 days) were as follows: “Compared with unvaccinated children, the adjusted OR for children who received 2 or 3 doses of BNT162b2 was 0.70 (95% CI, 0.52-0.93) for a COVID-19–related ED or UC encounter, 0.60 (95% CI, 0.39-0.92) for outpatient visits, and 0.67 (95% CI, 0.53-0.85) for either outcome. The risk of a positive test result for SARS-CoV-2 during ED or UC and outpatient encounters was 0.56 (95% CI, 0.40-0.77) for those who received 2 doses vs 0.88 (95% CI, 0.62-1.25) for those who received 3 doses.” The higher risk with 3 versus 2 doses probably reflected the emergence of omicron viral lineages at later time points, the authors said.