Why Children Will Not Be Included In The First Wave Of Covid-19 Vaccines
Clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine for children are only just beginning. Most kids will not be vaccinated until later in 2021
As encouraging news emerges about a possible vaccine against Covid-19, the natural question becomes “When will I get mine?”
There is still no definite date that vaccines will be widely available, but one demographic can bet on not being immunized during the initial rollout of Covid-19 vaccines — kids.
Drug company Moderna announced that they will begin to recruit for clinical trials looking at the efficacy of their mRNA-1273 vaccine in adolescents. With promising efficacy and safety data emerging, this begs the question — why the delay in testing efficacy in children?
How Vaccines For Children Are Made
Many feel that children are among the most vulnerable populations in society. Many social and medical protections are first extended to safeguard children before adults. But the opposite is true when it comes to experimental drugs and therapies including vaccines.
Drug companies are required to first test the safety and efficacy of a vaccine on adults before testing on children. Vaccine makers would only be able to initiate clinical trials on children once long-term safety data was available on adults. In the case of a Covid-19 vaccine, that means right now.
Phased clinical trials are a lengthy and intentionally controlled process. Testing begins in the laboratory by establishing a mechanism, then in animal models and finally in three phases of human clinical trials with increasing participant cohort sizes.
A Different Immune System
Children, particularly infants and toddlers have immune systems that behave differently from adults. For those within the first year of life, the sophisticated system of antibody production — what is known as adaptive immunity — has really only just begun. Up until then, children are protected by a vigorous innate immune system, and what antibodies are pass from mother to child in the breast milk.
