There has been a lack of detailed planning for a pandemic that affects children, argue these authors
Before covid-19, concerns were raised that the UK was unprepared for a pandemic that predominantly affected children.1 The situation has not changed with a lack of granular pandemic planning for children since the planning for a potential H1N1 pandemic in the mid-2000s. This is of concern as a future global pandemic may result in a marked increase in critical illness and mortality in children compared to the covid-19 pandemic, where serious illness has been much lower than in adults.2 For example, the emergence of a new virus with the pathogenicity and high transmissibility of measles would be devastating. From 2000 to 2018, it is estimated that measles vaccination prevented around 23 million deaths, mostly in children, showing the impact that a measles-like virus could have on children.3 An immediate challenge is to develop pandemic preparedness for children that is immediately actionable, scalable, known about by front-line healthcare workers and cognisant of recent transformations in paediatric practice.
Children are extremely effective at transmitting respiratory viruses. For example, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infects almost all children by the age of two and infection rates of health workers caring for …