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Saturday, June 28, 2025

Is the COVID-19 vaccine safe for children? Here's what we know...

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1283 days ago
20211223
Is the COVID-19 vaccine safe for children? (AP Illustration/Peter Hamlin)

Is the COVID-19 vaccine safe for children? (AP Illustration/Peter Hamlin)

By LAU­RAN NEER­GAARD | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

 

Yes, U.S. reg­u­la­tors au­tho­rized Pfiz­er’s vac­cine for younger chil­dren af­ter mil­lions of 12- to 17-year-olds al­ready safe­ly got the shot, the on­ly one avail­able for chil­dren in the coun­try.

More than five mil­lion chil­dren ages 5 to 11 years have got­ten a first dose since ear­ly No­vem­ber, and gov­ern­ment safe­ty mon­i­tor­ing has not un­cov­ered any sur­prise prob­lems.

This age group gets kid-size dos­es of the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech vac­cine, a third of the amount used to vac­ci­nate every­one 12 or old­er. The Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion cleared the shots based on a study show­ing the kid-size dos­es were 91% ef­fec­tive at pre­vent­ing symp­to­matic COVID-19. The 5- to 11-year-olds de­vel­oped virus-fight­ing an­ti­bod­ies as strong as those of teens and young adults who got reg­u­lar dos­es, with sim­i­lar or few­er an­noy­ing re­ac­tions such as sore arms, fever or ach­i­ness.

The FDA as­sessed the safe­ty of the kid-size dos­es in 3,100 vac­ci­nat­ed young­sters. Reg­u­la­tors deemed that enough da­ta, con­sid­er­ing the trove of safe­ty in­for­ma­tion from hun­dreds of mil­lions of larg­er dos­es giv­en to adults and teens world­wide.

Very rarely, teens and young adults giv­en the Pfiz­er vac­cine or a sim­i­lar one made by Mod­er­na ex­pe­ri­ence a se­ri­ous side ef­fect, heart in­flam­ma­tion, or what doc­tors call my­ocardi­tis. It’s most­ly in young men or teen boys, and usu­al­ly af­ter the sec­ond dose. They tend to re­cov­er quick­ly, and af­ter in­tense scruti­ny U.S. health au­thor­i­ties con­clud­ed the vac­cine’s ben­e­fits out­weigh that small risk.

The Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion is look­ing in­to a hand­ful of re­ports of heart in­flam­ma­tion, most­ly mild and brief, among 5- to 11-year-olds since vac­ci­na­tions of that age group be­gan.

To put the risk in con­text, COVID-19 al­so caus­es heart in­flam­ma­tion, of­ten a more se­vere kind, said Dr. Matthew Os­ter, a pae­di­atric car­di­ol­o­gist at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty. It al­so some­times oc­curs in chil­dren who get a mul­ti­sys­tem in­flam­ma­to­ry syn­drome af­ter a coro­n­avirus in­fec­tion.

Be­fore the pan­dem­ic, doc­tors reg­u­lar­ly di­ag­nosed heart in­flam­ma­tion caused by bac­te­r­i­al or vi­ral in­fec­tions or med­ica­tions, again most­ly in teen boys and young men. Os­ter said one the­o­ry is that testos­terone and pu­ber­ty play a role, which is part­ly why many ex­perts ex­pect any vac­cine-re­lat­ed risk would be low­er for younger kids get­ting a small­er dose. —(AP)

COVID-19HealthUnited Stateschildren


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