A leading epidemiologist has urged the government to adjust the targets underpinning the national plan, warning that reopening once 70 per cent of the adult population has been vaccinated will leave children exposed.
It comes as three children under the age of 12, including a baby and a child aged under 10, are in intensive care in New South Wales after contracting COVID-19.
The infant is one of 2000 children in NSW infected with the virus, with the baby currently requiring ventilation, according to news.com.au.
UNSW professor and epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws said Australia’s national plan to reopen would leave “our young very much susceptible” to COVID-19.
“This idea of opening up supposedly safely at 70 per cent or 80 per cent of adults – that’s people over 16 years of age – that really leaves the 15 and under at risk,” Professor McLaws told The New Daily.
“Because one in two people will be still potentially unprotected, and most of that one in two will be people that haven’t had time to get vaccinated, so young adults, adolescents and of course the kids that we don’t yet have approval or safety of vaccines [for].
“It’s quite remarkable how the shift of suffering has moved … it’s not good news for the kids who can’t get vaccinated.”
Professor McLaws noted multiple international studies into children and the Delta variant, including new research indicating a sharp increase in children hospitalisations compared to previous strains.
It found hospitalisation rates in the United States for children and teenagers increased nearly fivefold due to Delta.
She said while the Delta variant wasn’t more deadly, it was more of a threat to children than previous strains, as studies have shown it is the most transmissible variant.
“It doesn’t surprise me in Australia that we are now starting to see very little kids, babies, being admitted to hospital because Delta is different,” Professor McLaws said.
“We’ve got a circulating virus. We are not going for zero (cases), we can’t get to zero any more, but it doesn’t mean we sacrifice the kids’ health.
“And for those that say it’s mostly mild, I will remind them why we vaccinate for rubella: It has an R0 of six just like Delta has.”
R0, pronounced R naught, is a mathematical term that indicates how contagious an infectious disease is.
An R0 of six means a person who has the disease will transmit it to an average of six other people.
Delta is estimated to have an R0 of six in the absence of lockdowns and physical distancing, but some epidemiologists estimate these measures have pushed it down to about 1.5.
“We vaccinate kids for rubella so they don’t suffer the morbidity [and] they don’t give it to people who may be pregnant and so it doesn’t spread. You don’t want kids to get sick, so we don’t want kids to get Delta,” Professor McLaws said.
“We should be vaccinating as a priority the 12-to-15-year-olds as well as the young adults. Then you will probably see a much lower rate in the community.”
Concern for enough hospital beds
Professor McLaws raised concerns about the effect of the Delta variant on demand for hospital beds and intensive care capacity, noting that Sydney only has two public paediatric hospitals.
According to NSW Health figures, cases are expected to continue increasing until mid-September in the local government areas of concern, with a peak in hospitalisation and ICU utilisation to follow.
The modelling suggests between 2200 and 3800 people will require hospitalisation.
On Monday, 1138 people were in hospital for COVID-19 across the state, of whom 197 were in ICU, according to the Department of Health.
“In NSW, where we are the hotspot at the moment, we’ve only got two paediatric hospitals, so we really do need to start thinking, ‘Do we need more beds in intensive care? Do we need more experts in emergency room admissions? And do we need more experts in infectious diseases?'” Professor McLaws said.
“When we start opening at 70 per cent of adults, [at which point we will] have one in two people [unvaccinated], which will mainly be young adults, adolescents and kids, we will start seeing potentially more hospitalisations – not necessarily admissions but ED (emergency department) presentations.”
