Shot at Little Arms: NC Twins Part Vaccine Test Kids

Durham, NC — The 9-year-old twins did not flinch when each received a test dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine — and wore a glittering bandage to cover the area.

“Glitter makes everything better,” Marisol Gerald declared when she jumped off the Duke University test bench to give way for her sister Alejandr.

Researchers in the United States and abroad are beginning to test younger children to ensure that the COVID-19 vaccine is safe and works with age. The first shot is aimed at adults at the highest risk of coronavirus, but children should also be vaccinated to end the pandemic.

“Children should be shot,” Marisol told The Associated Press this week after the sisters participated in a new study of Pfizer’s children under the age of 12. She is looking forward to when she will be able to sleep with her friends again.

So far, teenage testing is the most advanced in the United States. Pfizer and Moderna will soon publish results showing how two doses of the vaccine were given in a crowd over the age of 12. Pfizer is currently licensed for use from the age of 16. Moderna is for people over 18 years old.

However, younger children may require different doses than teens and adults. Moderna recently launched a study similar to Pfizer’s new trial. The two companies are looking for the right dose for each shot in each age group to eventually vaccinate a 6-month-old baby.

Last month in the UK, AstraZeneca began researching vaccines between the ages of 6 and 17. Johnson & Johnson is planning its own pediatric study. In China, Sinovac recently announced that it has submitted preliminary data to Chinese regulators to show that the vaccine is safe for children up to 3 years of age.

Dr. Emmanuel “Chip” Walter, a Duke pediatrics and vaccine expert leading Pfizer’s research, said all that is being deployed because the country must vaccinate children to achieve herd immunity. It is important to obtain this data for vaccines.

Most COVID-19 vaccines used worldwide were initially studied in tens of thousands of adults. Children’s research does not have to be that large. Researchers have safety information from those studies and the subsequent vaccination of millions of adults.

Also, the prevalence of infection in children is very low, accounting for about 13% of the COVID-19 cases recorded in the United States, so the main focus of pediatric research is not to count the number of illnesses. Instead, researchers are measuring whether vaccines improve the immune system of adolescents as well as adults — suggesting that they provide similar protection.

Children are far less likely to get a more serious illness than adults, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, because at least 268 people have died of COVID-19 and more than 13,500 are hospitalized in the United States alone. .. It’s more than dying from the flu in the average year. In addition, few people have developed a serious inflammatory condition associated with the coronavirus.

Aside from their health risks, there are still questions about how easy it is for children to spread the virus. This requires complex efforts to reopen school.

Earlier this month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top US infectious disease expert, told Congress that high school students are likely to begin vaccination in the fall. He said elementary school students may not be eligible until early 2022.

In North Carolina, Marisol and Alejandr chose to volunteer after their parents explained the opportunity, said her mother, Dr. Susanna Nagy, an infectious disease specialist at Duke University. Long before the pandemic, she and her husband, Dr. Charles Gerald, an emergency physician, regularly discussed their research projects with the girls.

In the first phase of the Pfizer study, a small number of children are vaccinated with different doses so that scientists select the optimal dose to test thousands of children in the next phase.

“We really trust the research process and understand that it has no effect but can have side effects,” Nagy said of the decisions parents face when enrolling their children. explained.

But the nine-year-olds have some understanding of the pandemic devastation, and “it’s great to be involved in something that isn’t just about you, but something you’re learning,” Naggie added.

“They are worried about others. I think this is really what you know, they went home for them.”

For Marisol, the only “slightly nervous and scary” part was that he had to provide a blood sample first.

The vaccination itself was “really easy. If you just sit still during the shot, it will be easy,” she said.

TThe Associated Press’s Department of Health Sciences is supported by the Department of Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. AP is solely responsible for all content.