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In yet another twist to the debate over how best to protect children against the coronavirus, researchers reported on Wednesday that Covid vaccines conferred diminished protection against hospitalization among children 12 and older during the latest Omicron surge. Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization held steady in children aged 5 to 11 years, however, and among adolescents ages 12 to 18 years, two doses of the vaccine remained highly protective against critical illness requiring life support. (Mandavilli, 3/30)

The omicron variant of Covid-19 has been linked to more hospitalizations, severe complications and deaths of young children than previous waves of the virus, suggesting the highly contagious strain may not be as mild as initially thought, according to a Hong Kong-based study. Researchers from the University of Hong Kong and Princess Margaret Hospital reviewed child hospitalizations during different stages of the pandemic. They found that cases were far more severe in the omicron wave that continues to sweep through the city in its worst outbreak of the pandemic. (Lew, 3/31)

The youngest group eligible to be vaccinated against Covid-19 in the US, children ages 5 to 11, is also the least vaccinated one. In about half of US counties, less than 10% of children 5 to 11 are fully vaccinated, according to a CNN analysis of data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of the counties with especially child low vaccination rates are in the South, where nearly two-thirds of counties have vaccinated fewer than 1 in 10 children ages 5 to 11. (Kounang and McPhillips, 3/31)

Moderna says it has gathered enough data in support of its Covid-19 vaccine for the youngest children. But it may not be enough for regulators to greenlight the shot for kids. Public health officials, pediatricians and infectious disease experts are split over whether the company’s trial results are sufficient for the Food and Drug Administration and its independent advisers, or whether they will want to see data on a third dose as they did with Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine for children under 5. (Foley, 3/30)

The COVID-19 vaccine shot that went into Nohemi Lima Eusebio’s arm as she sat on a dusty yellow school bus at the U.S. border checkpoint in Laredo was just days away from going in the trash in Dallas. The dose had been in a batch earmarked for Texas residents, but it was about to expire at a clinic nearly 500 miles away because nobody used it. Instead, it turned out to be a potential lifesaver for Lima Eusebio, a 44-year-old single mom whose job in the close quarters of a factory across the border in Nuevo Laredo put her at risk for the virus and made her fear for the safety of her loved ones. (Brooks Harper and Garza, 3/29)

"How to Survive a Pandemic," investigative journalist and director David France’s documentary on the road to developing, producing and inequitably distributing several Covid-19 vaccines, begins on the day vaccines went from murky future to clear horizon. The film opens in December 2020, in the remarkably bespoke basement of the US Food and Drug Administration’s Dr. Peter Marks. The room is decked in Mardi Gras beads and a teddy bear; Marks’s clunky work laptop is surrounded by cans of oats. On camera and on the phone with Gen Gustave Perna, the chief operating officer of the federal Covid-19 response for vaccine and therapeutics, Marks celebrates the FDA’s emergency use authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. “Sorry you had to deal with all that political crap,” says Perna. “Vaccines will be moving tomorrow.” (Horton, 3/30)

A rare head-to-head comparison shows that the COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna outperform those from Johnson & Johnson and Novavax1. The data also provide a finely detailed picture of the immune protection that each vaccine offers — information that could be useful for designing future vaccines. The research was posted on the preprint server bioRxiv on 21 March. It has not yet been peer reviewed. (Walz, 3/29)