Moderna Vaccine Provokes Strong Immune Response in Children 6 to 11

The delay in authorization has been longest in the United States. Europe’s drug regulators approved Moderna’s vaccine for adolescents aged 12 to 17 last summer, and has recommended approval for children aged 6 to 11.

Regulatory agencies in Canada and Australia have also authorized the Moderna vaccine for 6- to 11-year-olds.

In the United States, just over one in four of the 28 million children aged 5 to 11 have been immunized against the coronavirus. Parental reluctance seems to stem partly from the fact that the infection is known to be less risky for children.

“The risk of a kid getting severe Covid is much, much, much lower — let’s be honest about that,” said Dr. Ofer Levy, director of the precision vaccines program at Boston Children’s Hospital and an adviser to the F.D.A.

Still, he said he had just treated a child with leukemia who had been hospitalized for Covid. “Some children do get severe Covid, some end up in a hospital,” he said, adding that more than 1,500 children under 18 have died so far in the pandemic.

“I’m not into mandates, but I do think that families should have the option of protecting their youngest,” Dr. Levy said.

In its trial, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Moderna first tested different doses of its vaccine and chose a dose of 50 micrograms — half the adult dose — for children aged 6 to 11. The researchers then randomly assigned more than 4,000 children to receive two shots 28 days apart.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/11/health/covid-moderna-vaccine-children.html