Testing in children is a nervous next step on the road to the Covid vaccine

There are many questions surrounding the role of children in the coronavirus Pandemic But one thing is clear. vaccine, Just like an adult.

That means injecting dozens The kids With products-a prospect that will strain many parents. Oxford University and AstraZeneca Plc will begin testing jabs for children aged 5 to 12 as school and nursery reopen in the UK.

Children seem less affected by Covid-19, but their role in the transmission of the virus remains unclear. The vaccine will protect them and ensure that they do not infect other, more at risk people such as teachers and grandparents. However, pandemics occurred during a period of heightened resistance to vaccination.

“These are, of course, very personal decisions, but everyone should ask themselves. When others later contributed to making the vaccine safe, the vaccine for my child would Do you want? ”Said Beat Kampmann, a professor of childhood infections and immunity and director of the Vaccine Center of London Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “We must thank the people who took that slight punt.”

Children were excluded from early Oxford research activities. Their jabs, the world’s forerunners of vaccine development, were first tested on adults and showed only transient side effects such as temperature and arm pain. As it enters the more advanced research phase of June, it will be given to as many as 10,260 children.

School restart

A spokesman for the Oxford Covid-19 Vaccine Team said detailed information on the child portion of the trial will be available when the group opens patient recruitment in the coming weeks. He declined to comment further.

As schools and nurseries are showing signs of reopening in some countries, the UK Government Scientific Advisory Board says there is “substantial uncertainty” about its impact on pandemics. There is some evidence that children do not get the virus as easily as adults and suffer mild symptoms. Only a handful of children under the age of 15 died, with more than 38,000 deaths in the UK.

Recruitment of vaccinations for children trial In the United Kingdom, this is usually done through a doctor’s office or a healthcare professional. It is rare for children to test the vaccine before adults because trials tend to progress according to age group. Jabs are often given at home, and parents are regularly asked to take a temperature reading, keep a diary of their child’s reactions, and make follow-up visits for blood tests.

One of the benefits of participating is that the clinical trial team gives the child other routine immunizations at home visits during the study period. There are no financial incentives to participate and parents can withdraw their children at any time.

Still, childhood vaccines are controversial. Opposition voice communities are raising concerns worldwide about their relevance to conditions such as autism. Reports of connections are not trusted, but do affect the understanding of parents. There were also legitimate issues, such as a slight increase in 2010 in cases of narcolepsy found to be associated with the swine flu vaccine.

Vaccine test

For most parents, vaccination is not a problem. When Cala Coretta became her new mother in 2006, she was invited to enroll her baby daughter, Carys, in the B meningitis vaccine trial.

“When I became a mother, I suddenly noticed my death and had meningitis on all lips,” Coretta, a 13-year-old daughter, said in a telephone interview. “I wondered why I wasn’t interested in it and why I didn’t want her to be vaccinated against it. I knew they had to start somewhere.”

Coretta said she would ask if she wanted to participate in the Covid-19 vaccine trial if her child was in the appropriate age group.

Personal and greater benefits are the two most common reasons parents are involved, according to Shamez Ladani, a pediatric infectious disease consultant at St. George’s Hospital in London and consultant epidemiologist at the Department of Public Health in England. Despite the risks, side effects are rare and often go unnoticed until the vaccine is launched and given to more patients, Ladani said.

“There are side effects that aren’t really known until 100,000 doses. This is always a concern,” said Ladani, who is often involved in vaccine trials. “But no clinical trial is big enough to address it.”