An ethical analysis of vaccinating children against COVID-19: benefits, risks, and issues of global health equity [version 2; peer review: 1 approved, 2 approved with reservations, 1 not approved]

An ethical analysis of vaccinating children against COVID-19: benefits, risks, and issues of global health equity [version 2; peer review: 1 approved, 2 approved with reservations, 1 not approved]

Blog Article

COVID-19 vaccination of children has begun in various high-income countries with regulatory approval and general public support, but largely without careful ethical consideration.This trend is expected to extend to other COVID-19 vaccines and lower ages as clinical trials progress.This paper provides an ethical analysis of COVID-19 vaccination of healthy children.Specifically, we argue that it is currently unclear whether routine COVID-19 vaccination of healthy children is ethically here justified in most contexts, given the minimal direct benefit that COVID-19 vaccination provides to children, the potential for rare risks to outweigh these benefits and undermine vaccine confidence, and substantial evidence that COVID-19 vaccination confers adequate protection to whole wheat phyllo dough risk groups, such as older adults, without the need to vaccinate healthy children.We conclude that child COVID-19 vaccination in wealthy communities before adults in poor communities worldwide is ethically unacceptable and consider how policy deliberations might evolve in light of future developments.