Moderna has started dosing patients in a mid to late-stage study of its COVID 19 vaccine in children aged six months to less than 12 years.
The study will evaluate the safety and effectiveness of two doses of its mRNA-1273 shot given 28 days apart and plans to enrol about 6,750 children in the United States and Canada.
A similar trial of the shot in children ages 12 to 17 is now underway and fully enrolled, as is one being conducted by Pfizer for children ages 12 and older.
If Moderna and Pfizer trials go well, middle and high school-aged children could get vaccinated by the fall, but with tests for younger children just beginning, they probably won’t get vaccinated until early next year.
Moderna’s vaccine has now been approved for emergency use in American’s 18 years and older, but children haven’t been of a high priority for vaccinations because they tend to get infected at lower rates, and COVID 19 rarely proves fatal for them.
More than 21 per cent of US adults have now had one or more doses of the coronavirus vaccine, and 11.5 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated.
In the early days of the rollout, officials were centred on the challenges of ramping up the vaccine stock and ensuring that the most at-risk people, ageing Americans, health care workers, and those with high-risk chronic conditions, got vaccinated first.
Now, as vaccines become more broadly available, experts have expressed concern that vaccine hesitancy could become a barrier to progress towards attaining herd immunity.
Dr Fauci and other public health officials estimated that at least 70 to 80 per cent of the US population needs to have immunity through vaccination or a previous infection to keep the virus from taking off again.
Numerous American’s seem reluctant to get vaccinated, or getting their children jabs, but this could become an essential tool for keeping the coronavirus at bay.
What’s more, an increasing percentage of schools across the country are reopening as the deadline for President Biden’s goal of getting children back to school within the first 100 days of his term approaches.
So far, children don’t seem to be significant vectors of the disease, but the more children are in contact with their peers and teachers, the more potential there will be for viral spread amongst them.
And there’s been a huge response towards these new vaccines and numerous people are extremely angry, so why is this one so different when people have been born into a world where an entire series of vaccines are compulsory for children, with many starting straight away after birth, and with these vaccinations, numerous dangerous communicable childhood diseases have been prevented for decades, so why would these new vaccines be a problem?
Vaccines are usually put under rigorous testing over several years. They’re tested and tested and then tested again to make sure there are no unfavourable side effects in people that are going to have the vaccination coursing through their veins.
But with the COVID 19 vaccines, people have no concept of what the side effects will be initially and over numerous years, and not many parents will allow their infants and young children to take part in what is a trial because the vaccine hasn’t been tested for long enough, and when it comes down to it, giving a child a vaccine that’s not been tested properly, and consciously allowing that equates to child abuse.
And now there’s evidently been COVID associated deaths, so far suspected in Europe. So, do we get the jab, or do we measure our odds against all eventualities?
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 