Will children be vaccinated in the USA shortly?

Tristen Sweeten, a 34-year-old nurse in Utah, hopes her three children will receive Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine through its pediatric clinical trial. The sooner the better, she said, for their safety and the greater goal of ending the pandemic.

Angie Ankoma, a 45-year-old Black mother of four who works in philanthropy in Rhode Island, believes trials must include diverse populations and participated in one for a COVID-19 vaccine herself. Volunteering her kids for possible inclusion in Moderna’s trial was a tougher call.

Sweeten and Ankoma are among thousands of U.S. parents who volunteered to have their children participate in new trials run by Pfizer with BioNTech or Moderna,

the first companies making strides toward developing a safe COVID-19 vaccine for the country’s 48 million children under age 12.

Health officials say vaccines are crucial to ending the pandemic. But many are concerned vaccine hesitancy in some adults will be even more pronounced when it comes to their children. Parents may question the risks versus benefits, given the unknowns about the vaccines’ long-term impact on children’s’ development and data on how few young kids have been hit hard by COVID-19.

To ease those concerns, some scientists say the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should slow the review process for pediatric COVID-19 vaccines.

Pfizer spokeswoman Jerica Pitts said it was premature to speculate on an approval pathway for children, but the company plans to work with public health institutions to promote the importance of vaccines.

Moderna research scientist Dr. Jacqueline Miller said the company has talked to the FDA about the best way to clear the vaccine for use in kids. She said the company hopes to make the vaccine available to children through emergency use authorization (EUA) that got it to U.S. adults in record time, in part to be able to get kids back to school “and the things that they all are longing to be doing.”

Sweeten’s husband Scott is a clinical researcher whose company has worked on the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca adult vaccine trials, so the couple, whose children are ages 5, 8 and 10, are comfortable with how they were developed, Tristen said.

“We feel like they’re very safe,” she said.

Ankoma consulted her pediatrician given her nagging doubts about unknown long-term effects. She ultimately decided the risk was worth it to immunize her four kids, ages 7 to 16.

“It was easier for me to decide for myself than it was for the kids, because…it was my own body,” she said.

‘THAT GOLDILOCKS MOMENT’

Researchers leading pediatric trials for Moderna and Pfizer in children as young as 6 months feel confident the vaccines will be just as safe and effective for children as they have been for adults.

Pfizer’s vaccine, already available to people aged 16 and up in most U.S. states, was found to work well in children 12 to 15 and may receive regulatory authorization for that age group as soon as next month. Moderna and Pfizer have said vaccines could be widely available to even younger children by early 2022.