Kids’ Vaccination News

Here in Vermont, we are making headway on vaccinations much more quickly than we could have predicted. In fact, the age band for those 55 and older is expected to open in as little as 5 weeks! This prompts many to wonder, when will a vaccine be available for children?

As you may know, the Pfizer vaccine is approved for those 16 and older while the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are for people 18 and older. While there are similarities between adult and pediatric immune systems there are also differences, so vaccine trials need to be completed on children younger than 16 before the vaccines can be approved in that age group.

Clinical trials are already occurring for younger age groups across the country and beyond. Pfizer and Moderna have clinical trials for children 12 to 15 that are ongoing. They expect to release data over the summer. It is reasonable to expect that children 12 and up may be eligible for vaccination shortly after data is released, assuming the trials demonstrate appropriate safety and immune response. That means that high-schoolers could be vaccinated before returning to school in the fall of this year!

A vaccine for those ages 5 to 11 will require another round of trials, which are expected to start later this year and results expected in the last quarter of 2021. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said that those under the age of 12 are very likely to be vaccinated by the beginning of 2022!

We know that children aren’t generally at risk of serious cases of COVID-19, but it is a possibility and so it is still important to vaccinate children. Here are some other reasons to vaccinate your kids:

• Reaching herd immunity through vaccination is our greatest hope to remain safe while being able to discontinue the restrictions we have lived with for the last year. Herd immunity requires that about 70 percent of the population be vaccinated. A quarter of the U.S. population is under 18 years old. Given that some adults will opt out of vaccination, we need children to get vaccinated in order to reach that minimum level of protection necessary to keep circulation of the virus down.
• While kids don’t usually become very ill with COVID-19, they can spread COVID-19 to the adults in their lives. Vaccinating kids will decrease the amount of viral replication in their bodies and decrease the likelihood of spread to the more vulnerable people who live or work with them.
• There are still some complications and long-term effects of COVID-19 that we don’t entirely understand. Rarely, those who have COVID-19 infection can later develop a condition called “multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children” or MIS-C. Some other reports have noted very rare instances of heart or other complications among older kids exposed to COVID-19.
• Illness isn’t the only way kids are suffering during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many kids who have not become ill are enduring upheaval in their daily lives, isolation, and increased stressors. Disruptions to education have impacted academic progress while lack of sports and other extracurriculars have impacted kid’s mental health. Getting both kids and adults vaccinated is the only way to decrease spread and return to our normal way of life.
• COVID-19 is dangerous, and the vaccines against the virus are safe. They have already demonstrated an excellent safety profile while greatly minimizing hospitalizations and deaths, which are the ultimate goals. By the time the vaccines are made available to kids, they will have been tested on millions of adults and tens of thousands of children, which will be a very good indication of their safety. Meanwhile, COVID-19 has killed 500,000 people, including at least 172 children in the U.S. alone and has greatly impacted everyone’s lives in negative ways.

I was vaccinated as soon as the vaccine was made available to me, and I intend to have my own children vaccinated as soon as the vaccine becomes available to them. If most of us get vaccinated and continue to follow public health guidelines, we can hopefully look forward to a much more normal 2022 and beyond!

Meghan Gunn, MD, is the chair of Pediatrics at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, VT.