COVID vaccines for babies are here!
Babies as young as 6 months can now get vaccinated for COVID-19. (Photo: Pixabay)
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized COVID-19 vaccines for children 6 months to 4 years old last Friday. Both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were given emergency use authorization after FDA staff and advisers gave it a nod the previous weeks. Now, they could be deployed as early as this week.
FDA and its advisers found that three doses of the Pfizer vaccine and two doses of the Moderna vaccine were safe and effective, producing the same immune response the vaccines do in young adults. Possible side effects include fever, fatigue, and irritability—nothing too bad like myocarditis, or heart inflammation, either (also super rare—rarer in kids, even).
Preliminary results favor the Pfizer vaccine—if parents are willing to go through the almost three-month wait for all three doses. Meanwhile, Moderna’s two doses only need to be given four weeks apart.
Either way, it’s better to know that both vaccines could still give kids the protection they need. Options are a rare privilege to most of us, after all.
Despite a wealth of options available to them, an April survey shows nearly 40% of US parents to children under 5 said they would "wait and see" before getting their kids vaccinated. Eleven percent would get it only if it were required, while 27% said they would "definitely not" get the vaccine. Just 18% of parents said they would vaccinate their children ASAP.
COVID isn't over for kids
Just remember: With or without their robust immune systems and mild symptoms, the kids aren’t alright with incomplete defenses against COVID.
As healthcare systems across the world learned the hard way, long COVID and the Omicron wave have panned out differently for children in recent months.
For instance, the outbreak of “mystery” hepatitis in European kids occurred during a large Omicron wave. Experts said SARS-CoV-2 was a likely trigger for hepatitis in as much as 14 out of 19 children. Most of them were young, unvaccinated kids.
Another condition triggered by COVID in children is multisystem inflammatory syndrome, which has affected one in 2,500 Australian kids previously infected with COVID. According to pediatrician Dr. Anna Sick-Samuels, “The number of MIS-C cases also rises about four weeks after waves of COVID-19 cases in that community. Doctors and researchers are still learning why some children develop this illness after COVID-19 infection but not others.”
Vaccines for the future and the future of vaccines
Besides the possible side effects of no COVID vaccines for kids, we ought to talk about what vaccines can do for them too. A childhood spent during a historic pandemic without catching the virus once or developing severe and/or long-term symptoms is peachy, but it shouldn’t be at the cost of just living in a bubble at home under Mom and Dad’s protection.
How about seeing more kids outside again? And being able to open more schools to address the ongoing under-education crisis? These, we’d love to see.
As younger kids in the Philippines wait their turn for the vaccine, the government says older kids 6 to 11 can now get vaccinated with Moderna too.
Meanwhile, adults are weighing between getting a second booster or waiting a little longer for bivalent, or Omicron-specific, vaccines. Experts advise to get the fourth dose now, even if it’s less effective against current variants. Because boosters are now expected to be a routine mainstay in a post-pandemic world, people can decide whether they want boosters or bivalents a few more months down the line.
