Many of you have been asking “my opinion” on the COVID-19 vaccination specifically regarding children. My opinion is based on non-biased research, in other words, NOT the news media.

With that being said, I am very excited to present brand new research that was sent to me from my friends at the Kresser Institute.

Researchers in Germany have published an important new study on the risk of COVID-19 in children.

Before I give you the highlights, I want to tell you what distinguishes this study from previous research on this topic.

Most studies that have looked at COVID-19 risk in children simply divide the number of kids with severe outcomes by the number of kids with confirmed COVID-19 who present to the healthcare system.

This dramatically increases the denominator, which in turn overestimates the risk because it excludes the much higher number of children who have COVID-19 but don’t seek healthcare because their symptoms are so mild. In fact, 40% of children with COVID-19 are completely asymptomatic.

The German researchers addressed this issue by dividing the number of kids with severe outcomes by the number of all kids with COVID-19 (not just those who presented to the healthcare system). This provides a much more accurate assessment of risk.

Here are the highlights of what the researchers found for healthy kids with COVID-19:

• The risk of ICU admission in kids ages 0 to 17 was 8 per 100,000 (0.08%) and only 2 per 100,000 (0.02%) in kids 5 to 11.
• There were only 3 deaths among the 1,056,276 kids studied (0.0000284%); not a single child between 5 and 17 years old died.
• Children 5 to 11 years old have a lower risk than those <5 years old or 12 to 17 years old.

To put this in perspective, the risk of death from flu in children ages 0 to 17 during the 2019-2020 flu season in the U.S. was approximately 10 per 1 million, or 3.33-fold higher than the risk of death from COVID-19 in this German study.

This is a large study, including statistics of more than 1 million children.

This is great news for parents. The German study shows us that the risk of COVID-19 to all kids is very low—and even lower for healthy kids with no comorbidities or pre-existing health problems.

What’s more, we know from an accumulating body of evidence that eating a healthy diet, staying active, and maintaining adequate nutrient status (vitamin D and zinc in particular) will also help protect both adults and children from infection and severe outcomes.

Be Well!