The Pfizer vaccine will soon be offered to 12-15 year olds, raising a mild conundrum for parents.
Should they skip the vaccine, given that most children have fared well when infected with COVID-19 (many already having been infected)?
Or should they immunize their child(ren), even though the vaccine is relatively new and doesn’t have a long track record?
Vaccines have had their missteps, most notably the recalled RotaShield immunization in 1999. However, the recall of RotaShield and the recent temporary pause of the Johnson&Johnson COVID-19 vaccine should instill confidence in the robustness and capability of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
255 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been given in the United States to date, with over one-third of the population being fully immunized. 1 out of 3 people you see today will have completed their vaccines, and if the immunizations were causing serious side effects, the data should have captured it by now.
In March, Pfizer reported results from a study with 2,260 children ages 12 to 15. None who received the vaccine contracted COVID-19. There were 18 cases of COVID-19 among children who received the placebo.
The vaccine works in adolescents.
I recently attended to a 15 year old male varsity soccer player with no past medical history, who ended up in the ICU for 10 days due to COVID-19 pneumonia. Thankfully, he survived. The vaccine would have prevented this.
There have been over 275 deaths in children 18 years and younger in the United States thus far from the pandemic.
And as new variants of COVID-19 infiltrate society, the onus to get protected increases.
As a pediatrician and father of three, it is quite clear that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the potential unknown risks.
My 17 year old has received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine, my 15 year old (who contracted a mild case of COVID-19 last summer) will receive it as soon as it is available next week, and my 13 year old received the Moderna vaccine via a clinical trial earlier this year (we are fairly certain based on his reaction to the injections it was not the placebo).
Risk calculus with a new vaccine is never easy. But parents can take a large amount of comfort in the data we have collected thus far.
Presently, the safety data of 255 million given doses combined with the risk of death and unknown long-term effects from a COVID-19 infection clearly outweigh the unknown specter of side effects from receiving the vaccine (and with each passing day there is more and more data supporting the safety of the vaccines).
I strongly encourage all parents to protect their adolescents as soon as the vaccine is available. The sooner we all become protected, the sooner we can put this pandemic behind us.
