COVID-19 vaccine for children may still be months away: Coronavirus updateExBulletin

The American Academy of Pediatrics is calling on researchers to expand the COVID-19 vaccine trial to include more children.

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John Moore / Getty Images

The American Academy of Pediatrics is calling on researchers to expand the COVID-19 vaccine trial to include more children.

John Moore / Getty Images

It can take just a few weeks for the COVID-19 vaccine to be approved for use in Pfizer, USA, and for its partner BioNTech to seek permission from the Food and Drug Administration. Emergency use permission Having been vaccinated a week ago, Moderna will follow suit in the next few days.

However, even if those vaccines are on the market, they are not available to children. This is because few children have participated in clinical trials so far.Pfizer has just begun Register a child Youth of 12 years old.

Earlier this month, the American Academy of Pediatrics Called on researchers Extend the trial to include more children and warn that access to the vaccine will be significantly delayed if they do not act quickly.

“Children aren’t just small adults,” Dr. Sally Pelmer, a professor of pediatrics, microbiology, and immunology at Duke University School of Medicine, said in an interview with NPR. Taking everything into account..

According to Palmer, the immune system of children is different from that of adults. “There are certain vaccines that work better for children than adults, and there are certain vaccines that work better for children than adults,” she said. “Therefore, they must be specifically studied in the pediatric population.”

Interview highlights

Do you think the COVID vaccine for children could be the same small dose or a completely different prescription as an adult would get?

It really requires some research to determine what is the correct dose and what is safe for children … the dose is important. So, again, it should be tested, especially in the pediatric population, before deployment.

Are you going to see a large vaccine test for the same kind of children we saw for adults, like the tens of thousands of children enrolled in these trials?

The good news is that vaccines are so effective in adults that all we can do in a pediatric population is to find out if the child responds the same as or better than the adult. Also, using some of the information gathered from adult trials, such as the level of immune response required to protect against infection, there may be a much smaller study design for the pediatric population to establish a vaccine. There are may be as effective as eliciting a defensive immune response in children compared to adults.

Can you predict when there will be safe and effective vaccines that are widely available to children?

I don’t know exactly how long it will take, but I expect the adult population to grow exponentially. However, I would like to encourage vaccine manufacturers and funders of these vaccine trials to move quickly to the pediatric population. I don’t think there’s really a reason to delay it, but it could take a few more months before sufficient data on pediatric patients get approval for that age group, which could be in late 2021.

Specifically, I think many parents understand that the spring semester will be a washroom and the vaccine will not be in time. But should they continue to have hope next fall semester?

I think it’s a big goal to have pediatric exam data available before the school opens next fall … and that we’ve experienced such misery so we can get going. I strongly hope. For children by closing schools without closing other business units known to have infection problems, such as indoor restaurants and bars.

Children are suffering — not much from the illness itself compared to adults, but they are really suffering in the way we deal with this pandemic. It should motivate these trials to begin as soon as possible, to obtain these innovations and these truly remarkable products being developed for the pediatric population, and to serve children. Because we rely on children. To fight the next pandemic.

Courtney Donning of NPR has edited an audio version of this story.