Study: Many children who contracted COVID-19 did not develop antibodies to ward off Omicron
“Despite availability in the U.S. since October 2021, vaccine uptake in children ages 5–11 years is overall low as of March 2022.”
A new study from researchers at Harvard Medical School, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shows that fewer than 10 percent of kids who contracted COVID-19 in 2020 or early 2021 developed antibodies capable of warding off the Omicron variant of the virus, according to a statement posted to the medical school’s website.
The statement said the study findings, published May 27 in the journal Nature Communications, track with prior studies of adults that showed getting COVID-19 once sadly doesn’t guarantee antibody protection against repeat infection at a later date.
“I hear parents say, ‘oh, my kid had COVID last year,’” said Dr. Adrienne G. Randolph, a co-senior investigator on the HMS/Children’s study and HMS professor of anesthesia and of pediatrics at Boston Children’s, in the statement. “But we found that antibodies children produced during prior infections don’t neutralize Omicron. This means that unvaccinated children are still susceptible to Omicron.”
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