The Morrison government has been accused of neglecting to assess the impact of the pandemic on young children, with current policies labelled “a series of crisis responses”.
Jay Weatherill, the former Labor premier of South Australia and chief executive of Minderoo Foundation’s Thrive by Five initiative, made the comments at the Senate’s Covid-19 inquiry on Tuesday.
Weatherill was one of several advocates who called for the government to do more to consider the interests of children, including developing a specific Covid-19 plan for them and a standing agenda item at national cabinet.
He said there needed to be “careful monitoring of health and wellbeing in children’s first five years”, warning the pandemic has seen “stress levels” in families rise, affecting children.
“The first thing the commonwealth could do is to fund the Doherty Institute to carry out modelling in relation to [the] 0-5 [age group], it’s inappropriate that that hasn’t happened already.”
The Doherty Institute modelling contained some estimates of infections, admissions and deaths for the under-16 age group, but their vaccination rates were not considered in the overall national target.
In September the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, called for more research into the impact of reopening on children, but was knocked back by the federal government arguing there was no excuse to delay the national plan because no vaccine had yet been approved for the under-12s.
On Tuesday Weatherill said current policies towards children were “a series of crisis responses” and more systemic solutions were needed, including monitoring international vaccine developments and standardising testing regimes for children aged nought to five.
He also called for universal early childhood education, and additional subsidies for up to 600 hours of care for children in the year before school.
The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute’s professor Andrew Steer, a paediatrician, refuted the suggestion Covid-19 is necessarily always mild in children, noting he had treated children that required admission to hospital and oxygen.
Of the 79,000 positive Covid cases from 30 August to 10 October in Australia, 21,000 were children, he said, with 636 of those (3%) admitted to hospital. There were no deaths.
In that period the hospitalisation rate of children reduced from 4.4% in the first fortnight to 2.1% in the last, reflecting higher vaccine coverage and a shift in the location of admissions.
In early September the majority of child hospitalisations were in New South Wales because children’s parents were unwell and they are admitted “with rather than for Covid”, Steer said. Now, the majority are in Victoria.
Steer said international evidence suggests about 0.7% of children who contract Covid-19 require admission to hospital and 0.07% require intensive care.
Steer said it was “pleasing to see” that Pfizer results for children aged five to eleven show that it is an effective vaccine and there is “every reason to think it will be safe” but there is still reason for caution because there is “not enough information about risks”.
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He noted there were some cases of mild myocarditis (inflammation of the heart), but children had recovered. Researchers want to see results from the 400,000 children under 12 who have had Pfizer in the US and Canada.
On Sunday the health minister, Greg Hunt, said that children aged between five and 11 would not be able to access a vaccine until at least early 2022.
On Tuesday, Murdoch’s professor Sharon Goldfield said there was some evidence the pandemic had caused more frequent suicidal and self-harm ideation and presentations to the emergency department, especially at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 when Victoria was “in and out of lockdown”.
Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth chief executive, Penny Dakin, noted that children are not represented at the cabinet level in Australia, arguing that because it is “everybody’s job” it becomes “nobody’s job” to represent them.
Unicef Australia, director of child rights, Nicole Breeze, said there had been some “mainstreaming” of the approach to children, with policy not designed specifically for their needs.
Labor’s Katy Gallagher said it “might shock most Australians” that Australia ranks 32 of 40 countries on Unicef’s Worlds of Influence report on children’s wellbeing, scoring poorly on mental health (35th) and physical health (28th).
Guardian Australia contacted Hunt and Scott Morrison for comment.
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