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WELLNESS - Children who reported to pediatric center emergency departments with respiratory illness and were hospitalized were more likely to have taken COVID-19 vaccines, according to a new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
More than half of vaccinated children included in the study were admitted to hospitals as inpatients, compared to less than half of unvaccinated children.
The study examined children aged 6 months to 4 years who went to emergency departments at one of seven pediatric medical centers, including Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and Seattle Children's Hospital. Some of the children were admitted to hospitals. The encounters happened as early as July 1, 2022, and as late as Sept. 30, 2023.
The children needed to have one or more symptoms indicating acute respiratory illness, such as fever, cough, or shortness of breath.
The overwhelming majority of the young children in the study never received a dose of a vaccine. That group of 6,377 far outnumbered the 281 children who received one dose and the 776 children who received at least two doses. Across the United States, most young children are unvaccinated.
Of the unvaccinated children in the study, 44 percent were hospitalized. Of the vaccinated, 55 percent were hospitalized.
"This means that upon visiting hospital emergency departments, compared to unvaccinated children, vaccinated children had *increased* risks of inpatient hospitalization, very statistically significantly so," Dr. Harvey Risch, professor emeritus of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, who was not involved with the study, told The Epoch Times in an email.
Vaccinated children were also more likely to receive intensive care, need supplemental oxygen, and die, according to the paper, though just three deaths were recorded among the study population and some of the differences were not statistically significant.
The CDC's media office, which promoted the study, told The Epoch Times in an email: "Although proportionally more hospitalized children had received a COVID-19 vaccine than children enrolled in the emergency department (ED), this does not mean that vaccinated children were more likely to be hospitalized."
The CDC also said the paper showed that vaccination was "effective at reducing emergency department visits and hospitalizations in children."
Dr. Eyal Shahar, an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona who reviewed the study, noted that the vaccinated children had worse underlying health. "That largely explains worse outcomes," Dr. Shahar told The Epoch Times via email. "We cannot attribute the outcomes to vaccination."
The CDC published the paper in its quasi-journal. Papers published by the journal are typically not peer-reviewed but are shaped to align with CDC policy. The CDC currently recommends COVID-19 vaccination for nearly all Americans, regardless of prior infection or underlying health.
The study's authors, some of whom work for the CDC, said the study showed that "receipt of ≥2 COVID-19 mRNA vaccine doses was 40% effective ... in preventing emergency department visits and hospitalization," referring to the Pfizer and Moderna modified messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines.
The authors reached that conclusion after separating out patients who tested positive for COVID-19. There were 387, with 94 percent unvaccinated. The unvaccinated were only 85 percent of the study population, indicating they were at higher risk of visiting an emergency department with respiratory illness and then testing positive for COVID-19.
"No one cares whether the vaccines reduce COVID-associated hospitalization if at the same time they increase non-COVID-associated hospitalization," Dr. Risch said.
The researchers estimated that the effectiveness of one vaccine dose against emergency department presentation or hospitalization was 31 percent, increasing to 40 percent for at least two doses.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, an epidemiologist in California who reviewed the paper, said that the authors inappropriately inferred causality despite the study being observational.
(Zachary Stieber is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times based in Maryland. He covers U.S. and world news. Contact Zachary at [email protected] This story was first published in TheEpochTimes.com.)
