Publications

Although children and adolescents generally have a milder form of covid-19 than adults, some young people develop a severe illness leading to hospital admission or even death. Children can also develop complications, such as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children and long covid syndrome.1 Furthermore, after the emergence of the omicron variant and the loosening of social distance measures, cases of covid-19 rose sharply among younger age groups, further disrupting schools and adding to communities’ public health burdens. Perhaps unsurprisingly, and after careful scrutiny of safety data, public health authorities in many countries approved and strongly promoted covid-19 vaccination for adolescents and, later on, children.