Editorial: Coming down the Covid Omicron wave with cause for hope

Production of the Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine for children aged under-5 in Puurs, Belgium. Photo / AP

EDITORIAL

It's unusual for 3235 to be considered a "low" number, but the confirmed Covid-19 community case data for Sunday qualifies - in the context of what New Zealand has been through this year.

It was the lowest daily figure since February 23. Even allowing that Sunday numbers generally are lower than Ministry of Health data on weekdays, it offered a bit of hope.

The seven-day average was also down to 4991 from 5919 the previous Sunday. But hospitalisations are still steady.

It has been a long struggle this past five months to find a way out of the Omicron mountain range.

Further good news came at the weekend with Pfizer/BioNTech's vaccine set to be approved to children as young as 6 months of age in the United States.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended the move following analysis by an advisory panel of outside experts. Vaccine shots were expected to begin as early as today in the US.

The Pfizer kids vaccine is a tenth of the adult dose and is given in three shots. The first two are given three weeks apart, and the third at least two months later. Experts noted that the Pfizer data on the level of effectiveness was limited at this stage.

Vaccines for the under-5s are highly likely to follow the US move in New Zealand - that's been the case with previous Covid vaccination steps during the pandemic. Very young children are among an estimated 16 per cent of New Zealand's total population without Covid vaccine protection.

A problem both countries will have will be convincing parents to allow their children to get doses.

In the US, Pfizer's shot has been available for teens since May last year and to children aged 5 to 11 since October. In that time 59 per cent of children 12-17 and 29 per cent of those 5-11 have had two shots.

Here the ministry's data shows that over 90 per cent of the 12 to 17 age group has had two shots but take-up is much lower for 5 to 11-year olds with 26 per cent double-dosed and 55 per cent with one dose.

AP reports that about 480 children aged under 5 in the US have died of Covid.

In New Zealand, four children aged under 9 have died, 929 have been hospitalised, and five have been in ICU. There have been 144,709 confirmed cases in that group amounting to 11.4 per cent of the country's total cases.

The need for protection against the worst outcomes of Covid - provided by the vaccine primary and booster shots for most people - is still there.

Northern Hemisphere countries are expecting to conduct new booster campaigns from September, focused on protection for the most vulnerable. Regulatory bodies overseas will discuss data on Omicron-specific Covid vaccines later this month.

European countries are experiencing an increase in hospital admissions fuelled by Omicron's BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, according to a Financial Times analysis. A World Health Organisation advisory panel has backed the idea of a shot targeted towards a variant.

Until there's a Covid vaccine effective against simply getting infected, the coronavirus will continue to be problematic, even as countries plough on with "normal" life.