Nearly 23 million eligible children have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine since the most recent group of 5- to 11-year-olds got the green light late last year and started rolling up their sleeves.
But many families are anxiously awaiting a pediatric vaccine for the youngest Americans – ages 6 months through 4 years – as the omicron variant surges across the United States.
“We do need a vaccine for these kids,” said Sean O’Leary, vice chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics. However, a vaccine for children younger than 5 may not be available in time “to change this current wave” of infections caused by the omicron variant, which many experts say may be nearing its peak.
Pediatricians say coronavirus vaccines probably will be important well beyond this wave.
Here are some things we know about the vaccine for the youngest children.
Q: When will the vaccine be available for children younger than 5?
There is no set date for when the coronavirus vaccine will be available for children younger than 5, but it is expected in the first half of 2022.
Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech recently announced that they are amending the clinical trial for children 6 months to 5 years to include a third dose of the vaccine. The companies said two doses of the vaccine – which is recommended for children 5 and older – triggered an adequate immune response in children 6 months to 2 years old. But in 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds it failed to trigger a response comparable to what was generated in teenagers and adults. The companies are also testing a third dose for other age groups.
No safety concerns have been identified, the companies said.
The decision to study a third dose in this age group “reflects the companies’ commitment to carefully select the right dose to maximize the risk-benefit profile,” Pfizer and BioNTech said in a statement.
If three doses trigger a protective immune response, the companies plan to submit the data to the Food and Drug Administration in the next several months. If it is authorized for emergency use, it will go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Kawsar Talaat, one of the principal investigators of the Pfizer pediatric trial and a physician at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said that although the news of the amended trial may be disappointing, a third dose is expected to work well to provide protection, particularly against omicron.
“I think that a third dose will give a nice boost, and honestly this is really exciting – as we know from the adult data, three doses is probably better for omicron. And I think it’ll be good to have similar data for children,” Talaat told The Washington Post in December.
Q: Will it be the same vaccine given to older children?
No. Children younger than 5 will receive less than one-third the dose given to 5- to 11-year-olds or one-tenth the dose given to those 12 and older.
But, at least in the clinical trial, the initial two doses are still given 21 days apart – the same amount of time for older children, teens and adults. In the trial, the third dose will be administered at least two months after the second dose in the two-dose series, Pfizer and BioNTech said in the statement.
Q: What about Moderna and Johnson & Johnson?
Moderna asked the FDA over the summer to authorize its vaccine for adolescents. In October, the regulatory agency indicated that it will take until at least January to complete a review of the company’s application for use of its vaccine in 12- to 17-year-olds, to evaluate whether the shot increases the risk of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle.
Moderna’s vaccine is being tested in children younger than 12, and the trials are ongoing.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the pediatric trials.
Asked about a pediatric vaccine, Johnson & Johnson said in an email that trials are underway for adolescents ages 12 to 17, but that the vaccine “is not currently authorized for use in children.”
Q: Do children under 5 need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus?
Some parents have questioned whether younger children really need the vaccine, particularly given that children tend to have less severe illness than adults. But Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said children can still “suffer and be hospitalized and die from this virus.”
Since the start of the pandemic, nearly 8.5 million children in the United States have tested positive for the coronavirus, resulting in more than 30,000 hospitalizations and more than 700 deaths, according to the most recent data from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
More than 6,000 children have suffered a rare but serious condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), which is associated with COVID-19 and can cause inflammation of the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, eyes and other organs, the CDC said.
The number of pediatric cases of COVID-19 is significantly lower than the more than 60 million total cases and over 800,000 deaths across the United States, but health experts said the virus is affecting children.
Offit said medical professionals are seeing a lot of children come into the hospital with COVID-19, some requiring intensive care, and “they’re invariably not vaccinated.”
“So it’s all very frustrating,” he said. “One thing is having a vaccine available, but another thing is actually giving it.”
Q: Should I be concerned about myocarditis?
There have been very rare instances of heart muscle inflammation in vaccinated adolescents and young adults. Although it has been reported after vaccination, the coronavirus-caused COVID-19 itself is more likely to cause myocarditis than the vaccine, especially in children who develop MIS-C because of the disease.
More than 245 million Americans have received at least one vaccine dose, including about 26% of people ages 5 to 11, 64% of people ages 12 to 17 and 73% of people 18 to 24, according to the CDC.
As of Dec. 16, about 1,900 recently vaccinated people under age 30 reported myocarditis or pericarditis (inflammation of the outer lining of the heart) to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Medical investigators are assessing what the relationship to the shots might be, the CDC said.
In a recent presentation from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, data showed that cases were significantly lower in the 12-to-15 age group, and even more so in those ages 5 to 11. As of Dec. 19, more than 8.5 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine had been administered to children ages 5 to 11, and there had been 12 reports of myocarditis that met the case definition, according to a slide show.
“There’s every reason to be confident that it wouldn’t be a problem in the less-than-5-year-olds who are getting an even smaller dose than the 5- to 11-year-olds,” Offit said.
And O’Leary said in the low number of cases reported among children, “they’ve almost all been mild, with recovery within a matter of days.”
In general, Offit, of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said parents should vaccinate their children against the coronavirus for the same reason they vaccinate them against other diseases – to protect them not only as children but also as they grow older, and to protect those around them.
“Knowing that children can suffer from this, knowing that children grow up and that they’re going to be susceptible to this virus,” he said, “we will need a high percentage of population immunity.”
Q: What should I do while waiting for the vaccine?
In the meantime, make sure your child is up to date on all routine vaccinations, experts said.
O’Leary, of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said although COVID-19 is understandably making parents nervous, “a lot of the diseases that we vaccinate kids for, like measles, are more severe in kids than COVID – and we have seen a global dip in those vaccines and we are very concerned about potential outbreaks of those diseases.”
O’Leary said that while parents and guardians are waiting for a vaccine for children younger than 5, they should make sure their kids have been vaccinated against these other diseases, including influenza.
“Those are things we can prevent,” he said.
(c) 2022 The Washington Post · Lindsey Bever
{Matzav.com}
Don’t worry. We’ll have the regular group posting hysterical claims that the vaccine will cause their skin to turn green and that it take away their humanity and turn them into automatons.
And will allow the government to control their thoughts.
Nah. Just a sweet 13 year old girl in lakewood.
No need to be over dramatic.
Also healthy 14 year old israeli dead from the vaccine.
I would say, your kid not mine, but im not as cruel as you!
“The sweet 13 year old girl from Lakewood.”
That was debunked. She did not go into cardiac arrest from the vaccine.
And always have people like you that can’t see anything beyond their own point of view…
Alternatively, they could instead point out to people who suddenly dropped dead after getting the shot. That’s a bigger problem than their skin turning green.
And you, of course, are part of the rational, enlightened and educated who knows everything about this vaccine, including why you’re still masking, distancing, quarantining.
But I already know your answer – it’s my fault. It’s MY refusal to vaccinate that is preventing your vaccine from working.
You forgot about causing sterility, or worse – having these children produce Chinese babies, by default. There is also an absolute need to mention Bill Gates’ involvement, so secretive that no specifics could be provided.
That’s all in top of a prediction by hitherto unknown kinesiology practitioner, or long discredited former physicians, that 158% of the children receiving the vaccine will unquestionably die within a year, two years, or sometime in the future (depending on particular conspiracist), some of them twice.
The only hope to contain the pandemic, which is altogether a hoax, the “regular” flu, or Pentagon’s sinister invention, lies in Dr. Hydroxylenko and “his” French invented and long abandoned protocol, or in Dr. Ivor McTin.
Then, myriad nameless “great” rabbonim of kigel shtiebel fame will be quoted, with all sorts of promotions for magical drops, or non-existent isurei deorayso.
Now, the green skin is a new one. I thought that it turns them into Democrats, but didn’t know about the skin.
Here is is a real question that you will never see answered. In the past two years over 700 children died from covid. That is the total number including those that had preexisting medical conditions. In the past two years well over 1,500 children under 14 years old died from suicides! And 6,000 kids under 15 died. And since the pandemic the numbers have skyrocketed.
How can anyone justify frightening parents and children about juvenile covid when it is not dangerous!
How can you justify canceling in-person school classes, mandating masks at schools and frightening kids to get vaccinated? Stop the fear-mongering already, there are consequences from this ill advised fear campaigns.
When thousands are dying from suicide and tens of thousands are suffering from anxiety why mandate or even encourage vaccines for otherwise health? How many otherwise healthy children died from covid?
Sure. Kill off the population asap. Which meshugene would give the death shots to children and cause them infertility?
“700 children died from covid since the beginning of the pandemic.”
How many had underlying illnesses?
How few were pre-adolescent?
Of all the hospitalizations, how many were actually there for other reasons, and also tested positive for covid?
How few of those that had Myocarditis were not quickly cured of it?
Out of 74.2 million minors (under 18) in the U.S. we had 700 covid deaths. (0.00094%)
We also had over 6,000 children dead from car accidents in the past 2 years.
(No more Cars-for-Kids? Force children to also were helmets and padded clothing when in a vehicle?)
What a horrific article! There’s no virus risk at all to children, and any child (whose health is not otherwise compromised, obviously) would do great just getting the omicron virus and getting over it within a few days, as has been occurring all over for the past weeks/months, thus acquiring strong lasting immunity, but the vaccine manufacturers put together a false Q&A based on false narratives, and pretend there is a need for children to risk the vaccine. And then when the question is asked about the risks, they dishonestly play it down based on the fact that the dose is much smaller for little kids! What?! The reason the dose is smaller is because little kids are smaller, so the risk level is the same! What lies!
I’m very disappointed that Matzav feels the need to post such dangerous and misleading drivel. For shame
With Covid-19 it all comes down to this…
“If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied during 1930s Germany, now you know.” — Banner of a Covid-19 protester
Rather than smugly (falsely feeling “superior”) and misleadingly pointing the finger at the “bad Germans”… NOW the REAL truth ABOUT NEARLY EVERYONE ANYWHERE is likely confronting nearly everyone because nearly everyone is conforming with the insane establishment mandates.
While at it let’s continue with real truths…
The saying goes “SEEK the truth and you shall find it” –and NOT that you find the truth by passively ACCEPTING what authorities tell you is the “truth” like herd animals unthinkingly obey their shepherds’ orders. Yet almost nobody ACTIVELY SEEKS the truth, they only PASSIVELY ACCEPT as “truth” what the (medical, religious, political) authorities tell them and so become UNthinking members of “herd stupidity.”
Do YOU actually SEEK the truth or are you a mindless member of “herd stupidity”?
Check out “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room” at https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html
You can ONLY see the official lies IF you SEEK the truth…. it means you must LOOK “behind the curtain” (a major lesson revealed in the Wizard of Oz film you probably have never learned or never cared to learn) — behind the official narratives.
If your employer (even educational or federal employers) wants you to take a Covid vaccine give him/her one of these form letters of exemption found at https://www.flemingmethod.com/exemptions or https://lc.org/exempt
“2 weeks to flatten the curve has turned into…3 shots to feed your family!” — Unknown
STILL….. can NOT see that the Covid Scam is a scheme AGAINST you (and any other non-ruling person anywhere), a scheme to either DESTROY or CONTROL you? No? Then ask yourself these 3 questions:
“1) Why do any businesses need proof of the so-called “vaccine” from a person who may or may not have received it, when the CDC Director has repeatedly stated that the Covid jab doesn’t stop transmission? So what do these vaccine ID passports do, other than control your access and spending?
2) Why are we being told that this is a deadly virus that only a “vaccine” can save you from, when the Covid-19 cases and deaths increased in 2021 AFTER 62% of people in the U.S. received the jab?
3) Why are we being told that Omicron is a scary, much worse variant than Covid itself when it only differs by .3%, meaning it’s not a “variant” at all, and is nearly identical to Covid, but with much less symptoms. Yet, mayors across the country are using Omicron as the reason to (illegally) mandate restaurants, entertainment venues, and gyms to turn away patrons unless they can show proof of the jab or a negative test? And let’s remember, those that have received the jab can still transmit Covid.” (https://www.coreysdigs.com/health-science/22-ways-to-stop-vaccine-id-passports-in-2022-and-why-we-must/ )
“The overwhelming majority of people who are called “infected” and “cases” are perfectly healthy. They’ve merely tested positive. AND worse, the test was rigged to turn out cascades of false-positive results. But a screaming headline about a million new cases in one day stirs up fear and justifies whatever fascist responses government officials want to impose. Which is the whole point of the exercise. [..] we’re now into the very worst of fake science. I’m talking sophisticated nonsense that only professional grifters and con artists can turn out.” — Jon Rappoport, Investigative Journalist
If you STILL are blind to the obvious go back and VERY CAREFULLY re-read and study (pull up the references cited in) the article “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room” linked to above.