Experts Say Now Is the Time for Kids to Get COVID Vaccines

Despite those concerns, research has found that the risk of myocarditis is much higher in children who develop COVID than in those who are vaccinated against it. It has also mostly occurred in boys. MIS-C in children after COVID vaccination is also extremely rare, and research shows those who develop it may have a specific genetic marker making them more susceptible. 

Yet some parents remain skeptical.

“I’ve seen the articles, especially in boys about the heart issue stuff, and that’s terrifying to me especially because my boys are super active,” said Sarah Weaver, a 40 year-old mother of three and high school English teacher in the Detroit metro area. 

Is Myocarditis Still a Concern?

Early in the pandemic, questions over vaccine safety increased as researchers started to track reports linking the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines to myocarditis in young adult males and adolescents, mostly after the second dose. 

Since that time, however, the CDC’s surveillance efforts have demonstrated a significant decline in these cases.

“It seems that the risk was highest after that second dose of the initial series and we’re not seeing it at this point,” said Sean O’Leary, MD, professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital, Colorado, and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases.

“We’re not anticipating with the new booster that MIS-C is going to come back based on what we’ve seen in the past year and a half,” he said.

Shelby Kutty MD, PhD, director of pediatric and congenital cardiology and professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, agreed.

“There were substantially more patients in the first wave than in recent times; frequency has come down overall,” he said. 

But Kutty also had an important message for parents and caregivers.

“When we talk about myocarditis, we think about a very scary infection of the heart and complications. … But it is not a new disease; it can happen with different viral infections,” he said.

“Most of the reported [vaccine-related] cases overall were clinically mild and most people recovered in 3 to 5 days with no other problems after that. They just required supportive treatment — like anti-inflammatory drugs — and almost 90% had resolution of symptoms when they were discharged from the hospital,” he said.

What About MIS-C (Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome)?

Another concern that arose early in the pandemic (and remains top of mind among many parents) is MIS-C, a condition that mimics Kawasaki disease and mostly occurs in young children, causing the blood vessels to become inflamed. Initially, most MIS-C cases developed 2 to 4 weeks after infection with COVID. Since that time, cases have followed the peaks of overall COVID-19 infection cases by about a month.

Robert W. Frenck Jr., MD, director of the Vaccine Research Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Ohio, explained that MIS-C is basically an overexuberant immune response. 

“You get fevers, you get conjunctivitis, enlarged lymph nodes, rash, etc. But if you look at the rate and severity of MIS-C from the infection versus the rate and severity from the vaccine, it’s about 7 to 8 times higher,” he said. 

Thus far, rates with both previous bivalent mRNA vaccines continue to be quite low, according to CDC data.

Pediatric COVID in Perspective

The flurry of information and headlines and numbers since the start of the pandemic has overwhelmed many parents and caregivers who, like Weaver, only want what is best for their children. 

“Parents want to keep their kids healthy; they want to keep their kids safe,” said Frenck. “They’re weighing the evidence and saying, ‘I don’t think that it’s important to vaccinate my child, it’s a mild disease, the risk is low.’ The problem is that I have no way to know if it’s their child or that child or the other child who’s going to have severe disease.”

Both he and O’Leary said not only is COVID now one of the top 10 causes of pediatric deaths, but more than half of COVID-related deaths in children have occurred in children with no underlying or preexisting medical conditions, meaning that they were preventable had these kids been vaccinated.